


Over hill and under tree

by fynndin, ironforged (sarisa)



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Crossover, Earth-3490, F/M, Fem!Aragorn, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Steve Rogers/fem!Tony Stark - Freeform, Steve and Tony end up in Middle Earth, aka “They Did It But It Didn’t Fix Everything", ish, pre-Bagginshield - Freeform, rule!63, that's it that's the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 05:40:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 43,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8610823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fynndin/pseuds/fynndin, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarisa/pseuds/ironforged
Summary: The Enchantress attacks the Avengers and sends Steve and Tony through a portal to Middle Earth. There, they seek the answers to many important questions, including (but not limited to): why is Bilbo Baggins taking the Ring to Rivendell 60 years early? Why does Tom Bombadil skip so much? Why weren’t the Barrow-downs in the movies? Why does everyone sing all the time? And why is there so much walking?





	1. Concerning Hobbits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our Heroes wander out of their own storyline and into someone else's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Art masterpost](http://sleepyoceanprince.tumblr.com/post/153494709773/cap-im-bang-art-to-ironforgeds-gigantic-epic-and) by the amazing Fynndin! (here be spoilers, ye be warned)
> 
> Huge, enormous thank yous go out to my wonderful, patient betas, agaryulnaer and redpepperink, without whom I would have dissolved into a pile of anxious goo sometime back in September and this fic would never have been finished.

“This is your fault.” Tony glares at the trees surrounding them, wishing for Wanda’s abilities if it meant she could set everything on fire.

Steve glowers down at her, jaw clenched so hard it makes an audible clicking sound. “I’m not the one who taunted her, Tony.”

“Oh right, you never provoke anyone, you don’t deliberately fucking set people off-“

“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you of all people!”

“Go suck a cock, Rogers!”

Steve takes a step towards her, and she gets up in his face in response, both of them spitting mad, before there’s the sound of a shriek to their right, and Tony swears under her breath. They start running in that direction automatically without a word, bolting through the trees, Steve in front and Tony close on his heels. Whatever that is, it can’t be good; they’re both uncomfortably familiar with the sound of genuine terror.

And sure enough, there’s a child- no, a little person in short pants- being harassed… by a guy in crappy-looking armor on a big black horse. “Hey!” Tony shouts, drawing his attention as Steve dives for the man on the horse. He doesn’t have the shield, neither of them is armed, but he ducks the first blow from the sword and swings his arms up and around, hooking the man around the waist and dragging him off the horse in a crash of armor and greatsword. The horse bolts with a screech that doesn’t sound entirely horselike, and Tony darts forward. Armored guy lands on top, and she grabs for his hood, yanking it back and meaning to go for his throat.

But there’s nothing under the hood. Literally nothing; it’s just air wearing armor and a cloak. “What the fuck?” she says, startled and backing up. Steve plants his feet on its breastplate and sends it flying backwards into the bushes, where it lands with another crash. It scrambles to its feet in a mess of robes and armor and promptly flees with another screech. Tony stares after it, then down at Steve, who rolls to his feet. “What the fuck?” she says again.

He just shakes his head, turning to look at the small person… and blinks. “You’re a hobbit!”

Tony gapes. “Holy shit,” is about all she can manage.

“Beg pardon,” the man says, raising a hand, the other holding a small silver blade. It’s not pointed in their direction, but it’s definitely out, and he’s backing away from them, slowly but surely. “I- ah, yes, thank you. I wish to express my gratitude, very kind of you, but I’m afraid I must be off.”

Steve looks from Tony to the man and back. “Um. Sir. Are you actually- ”

“A hobbit? Of course.” He frowns at them, although the severity of the expression is somewhat dampened by the way he keeps looking off into the trees with wide-eyes. “This is the Shire, after all.”

The Shire. Tony tries so hard not to do a bouncing dance of excitement at this confirmation, turning to look at Steve with wide eyes. This is bad, of course. It’s very bad that they’d pissed off that blonde Enchantress woman who keeps trying to get into Thor’s pants. They really shouldn’t be here. And yet- Middle Earth. Middle Earth. The Shire. And hobbits.

“Bilbo Baggins, at your service,” the hobbit continues, and Tony and Steve both do a double-take. “Good day, and my thanks for your assistance. But I’m afraid I must be off.” He turns on his heel and marches away, and they both gape after him. Steve’s mouth is open slightly; Tony would reach up and close it if she wasn’t so shocked, herself.

“Beg pardon?” she manages. That’s… that’s not right. This can’t be right.

But the hobbit who called himself Bilbo Baggins is walking rather quickly towards the ferry that they can see past the break in the trees, and they have little choice but to follow if they want to ask him what the hell is going on. Also, there’s the small matter of the black cloaked figures (holy shit Nazgul) coming back. There’s that.

In Tony and Steve’s collective defense, they’ve had some significantly weird things happen to them in the last few years. Steve woke up after being frozen in the Atlantic for seven decades and woke up in a science fiction-type future, Tony had an explosive reactor embedded in her chest cavity for a few years and built a flying suit of armor, the Norse god of thunder showed up and likes to sit on her couch in his underwear eating Pop Tarts, one of their good friends turns into a giant indestructible Gumby when he loses his temper. And, of course, can’t forget the whole Loki thing, aliens from the sky, alien portals in the sky, and of course more aliens, not to mention the homegrown talking metal dude who tried to recreate the meteor that killed off the dinosaurs.

Surrealism is kind of their medium. Weird is how they roll. But they’ve never been just chucked through a portal into a world that is supposed to be fictional, and is apparently… not?

Bilbo seems, understandably, shaken by the murder attempt, and so he doesn’t seem to notice how Tony and Steve both look like someone thwacked them upside the head with a frying pan as they follow him towards the edge of the woods. Or maybe he’s just too polite to mention it- that would also make sense, because- hobbit. Hobbits are polite, right? Tony has a tendency to fall asleep during that whole “Of Hobbits” section in the first book, but she does remember that they’re polite and courteous and have elevensies and teatime because she read it in a book. And then saw it in a movie. And… there were animated movies and action figures and conventions and movie prop replicas and.... and… and she really needs to stop or she’s going to send herself into a panic attack.

“Is this… a thing that’s actually happening?” she mutters under her breath to Steve. “Are we awake? Did we imagine the whole thing?” She pinches her arm, which hurts, so she’s probably awake. “Ow.”

“I don’t know,” he says quietly, sounding strained. “If we were sleeping, or under a spell, how would we wake ourselves up? It seems real.” He kicks a small rock; it clatters away. “Feels real.” He looks at the back of Bilbo’s head. “Real or not, we can’t just let him get killed.”

Well, Tony can hardly argue with that.

Bilbo’s skin is brown and a bit weathered, with a mop of messy brown curls going gray at the temples. He’s moving quickly, nervously, glancing from side to side as though expecting one of the black-cloaked figures to burst out from behind a tree. He looks very much like a hobbit transporting a very dangerous, very evil magic ring.

It's not supposed to be Bilbo Baggins chased by the black riders. It’s not supposed to be Bilbo Baggins, still young-looking, constantly touching his jacket pocket to make sure his Precious is still there, safe and sound. This isn’t how things are supposed to go at all. Both Tony and Steve have seen the movies, have read the books. Some of their first outings together had been to go see the Hobbit movies. They’re both very familiar with the plot, to extremely geeky levels, and none of this seems right. Or rather, it might be the right events, but it’s the wrong hobbit.

The obvious conclusion is that their sudden, unexpected arrival set off changes in the timeline, but Bilbo was already on his way out of the Shire when they’d arrived, so it must be something else. Is it possible that this universe, or whatever it is, is only a reflection of Tolkien’s books? Could this all be happening in their minds? Are their bodies lying somewhere, at the mercy of the Enchantress, while their minds are trapped in a reality that shouldn’t exist? Whenever Steve glances over his shoulder at her, she can tell that he’s also worried, but there’s nothing either of them can do about it. Honestly, their best bet is probably to just follow along and reach Rivendell- Lord Elrond or Gandalf, assuming they’re not figures of her and Steve’s collective imagination, are the only people Tony can think of that might be able to help.

At least, Tony thinks tiredly, she’s stuck in this situation with the only person she knows who’s as obsessed with Lord of the Rings as she is, even if she wants to throttle him.

“While I of course appreciate your assistance back there, I can’t ask the two of you to accompany me,” Bilbo says as they reach the edge of the woods a few minutes later, jolting Tony out of her thoughts. Beyond the trees, there’s a small wooden fence (probably waist height for a hobbit), and a little hut next to a small wooden ferry.

As Bilbo turns to face them, he looks like a man walking to the gallows. “The road looks to be quite dangerous, and you- well, begging your pardon, but you don’t seem to be from this area,” he adds, looking at Steve’s jeans and leather jacket. His boots are managing well enough on the wet grass and leaves, but Tony’s wearing trousers and a vest and button down, great for the boardroom and less so for tromping around in nature. She’s in sneakers, at least, although the ground is damp enough that she can already feel how much she’s going to hate not having waterproof shoes in the near future. “You would be much safer continuing on down the road yourselves.”

“Danger’s not a problem,” Steve says dryly. “We… work as soldiers. Often. Irregulars.”

“Even so,” Bilbo hedges. He shoots them both a look, his eyes lingering a bit dubiously on Tony. Soldiering is probably not a traditional role for a woman in this scenario. Right. The hobbit doesn’t say anything, is far too polite, but he does look her up and down, clearly judging her comparatively form-fitting clothes. Back home, her outfit would actually be modest; no boobs, no legs at all, and it’s not even very snug, just tailored. She can’t imagine what the reaction would be if she was wearing the undersuit, but she’s familiar with the tone of Tolkien’s works, and imagines that a woman in any sort of trousers is probably an unusual and likely scandalous sight.

She lifts her chin, ignoring the judgment. “We’d be better off staying together. There’s safety in numbers.”

Bilbo swallows, and they can see him wavering. One small hobbit won’t fare well against armored riders, and he knows it. It takes him a moment, but finally he sighs. “You’re too kind.”

“Well, we really aren’t from around here.” Steve tries a hopeful smile. “It’s unfamiliar terrain. How about we escort you where you’re going, and you can tell us about the area?”

Bilbo nods. “I suppose that will do. You don’t seem like bandits.” He makes a face. “They’re so rarely well-mannered.”

Before either Tony or Steve can respond, there’s another unearthly screech, and three more Nazgul charge out of the trees on their strange black horses. Rather than wait for permission, Steve leans down and grabs Bilbo around the waist, taking off, and Tony follows as close as she can, aware of the futility of anyone but a super soldier attempting to outrun a horse. The ferry’s within sight as they bolt out of the trees, though, leaping over a tiny hobbit fence that Tony’s too busy running to squee about, and Steve makes it easily, depositing Bilbo on the tiny thing with a thump and turning to loose the mooring rope. “Come on!” he calls as Tony follows. They start to drift away and she launches herself from the dock just ahead of the first of the Nazgul.

She lands with room to spare but almost upsets the tiny ferry, Steve catching her and dropping to the deck to distribute their weight. Bilbo had darted to the other side to avoid being crushed, and he stares back at the riders, swallowing hard. The lead one screeches after them and then they turn, galloping off upriver and disappearing into the trees again.

“That was fun,” Tony says faintly.

“Quite bracing,” Bilbo agrees, sitting down as close to them in the center of the craft as he can. He eyes the water suspiciously, looking pale in the dim light. Tony looks down at Steve, and then up at the pole attached to one side of the ferry. She should probably get up. Yes.

She rolls off of him, immediately missing his warmth, and he sits up with a grunt, going to his knees and picking up the pole. “Probably best we stay low,” Tony says as the ferry sways a bit in the water when they move. “I don’t really want a bath at the moment.”

“Heavens no,” Bilbo says emphatically.

Steve just huffs a laugh. “I’ll do my best,” he says quietly, looking upriver as he pulls them across, the task seemingly without much effort at all for him. “How far is it to the nearest crossing?”

“Twenty miles,” Bilbo replies, looking northward, one hand fiddling in his pocket. “The Brandywine Bridge. Not so far on horseback.”

Not so far at all. Tony exchanges a look with Steve, but neither comments. No need to agree aloud. Also no need to bring up the fact that there are nine of them, and the two of them are unarmed.

They cross the river and Bilbo seems familiar with the territory, leading them along the edge of farms and fields and past a walled hobbit settlement that he identifies as Brandy Hall, hidden by a tall hedge. Tony asks if they should plan to go inside, but he shakes his head. He doesn’t want to disturb his relatives, he says. More likely he doesn’t want to be noticed at all.

They spend a cold, damp night in a hay barn. Hay, as it turns out, itches terribly, and Tony has to fight off thoughts of ringworm as she pulls her vest tighter around herself, wishing she had a jacket. At least hay is insulating enough, she supposes, burrowing into it and pulling it atop herself for some extra warmth. Steve takes first watch without a word, and she manages to drift off into a doze after a while, her stomach grumbling. Bilbo had curled into a ball in his cloak, asleep before they could bring up the topic of food, and they’re certainly not lighting any fires tonight.

She wakes to find herself a bit warmer as a heavy weight is laid down over her; blinking her eyes blearily, she squints up at Steve crouching over her in the darkness, now just wearing his tee shirt.

“No,” she whispers hoarsely. “You’ll be cold. I’m fine.”

“You were shivering,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m okay.”

But he’s not, and she knows it; he hates the cold, perfectly understandably after what he went through in the ice. “I’m fine,” she says again, dislodging the jacket and pushing it towards him. “Really, Steve.”

“You’ll get hypothermia,” he says flatly, refusing to pick it up, and she rolls her eyes at him.

“All right, fine, here’s an idea.” She fights to make her tone civil, because this situation is not his fault, honestly it’s not, and they’re both hungry and cold and tired. “Whoever’s on watch gets the jacket. You’ve got a sweater underneath and I’ve got the long-sleeved shirt. We should both be okay. All right?”

He sighs, a short, frustrated sort of sound, but he relents. “Fine.”

He shuffles back away from her (neither of them can stand straight in this little shed), and she sits up, glancing over at Bilbo. Outwardly he seems to be asleep, snoring softly, and Steve nods a confirmation. Trusting his hearing, she whispers, “We should talk about what the fuck we’re doing.”

He nods, glancing at Bilbo again, and they move outside. Tony takes a deep breath of fresh air, glad to smell anything but hay and probable mouse droppings, plopping down next to the door with her back against the shed. Looking amused, Steve follows, and she jumps when his hand goes to her hair. “You’ve got straw,” he says, smiling and pulling out pieces of it, dropping them in her lap.

“It’s hopeless,” she says, shrugging. “It’s going to be everywhere.”

“True,” he says, not stopping his efforts. After a moment he lets his hand fall, still looking amused. “That’s a little better.” She huffs a little, fighting a smile of her own, and shivers again.

“That’s it,” he says, slipping one arm out of the jacket. “Sorry,” he says, not sounding very sorry as he wraps an arm around her shoulder, tucking the jacket around both of them. It puts her up against his side, and he’s like a portable furnace even now; she burrows into his side a little and sighs.

“Nature,” she mutters. “Who needs it.”

“I think it’s about all we’re going to find around here,” he says, an edge to his voice now.

“Yeah, about that.” She swallows. “No idea how we’re going to get back, if this isn’t just some spell and it’s all in our heads.”

Steve’s silent for a moment. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Yeah, I don’t know. Either she sent us somewhere or we’re in a made-up world in our minds. Could be either. I have no idea how to wake us up if that’s the case, and any ideas I have about that would be fatal if we’re not actually asleep.”

He looks over her head to where Bilbo’s sleeping inside. “Not worth the risk. If that’s the case, the others will rescue us.” He holds up a hand. “I scraped it earlier. We can be injured, and we need to eat, still. Basic human needs that you don’t have to take care of in most dreams.”

“Discounting that the Enchantress is involved, true.”

“I think we should play along.” He looks back down at her. “At the very least, if we really are… somewhere else, then talking to Gandalf or Elrond or Galadriel is our best bet. And if it’s real, it does seem like Bilbo could use our help.”

“Definitely true.” She pauses, considers. “It’s wrong, though. The black riders, and Bilbo being so young. If he’s carrying what we think he is- then this isn’t the same timeline as in the books. Things will be different, if they follow the stories at all. He could be doing something completely different, unrelated to the Ring at all.”

“The Nazgul are here sixty years early,” Steve says quietly. “Whatever he’s doing, we know why they’re here.”

Tony takes a deep breath, lets it out. If all of that is happening early, sixty years sooner than in the books, she has some memory of what the appendices had said about the political situation, but not nearly as much. And who knows if anything in the books will even be true? She has to hope that it will be, though; if they are asleep and dreaming, perhaps their belief in how things should be in Middle Earth will actually make them be that way. Certainly all of this could have been drawn from hers and Steve’s minds without much trouble.

“I’m really glad you’re here,” she admits. Then she realizes what she’d said, but she forces herself to carry on, because it’s true. Angry or not, fighting or not, Steve’s the only person with whom she’d want to be in this situation. “I mean. Not glad to be here, but if I have to be, then I’m glad it’s with you.” She clears her throat. “Since you, you know. You know Tolkien. Too.”

Steve had stiffened for a moment, but then he relaxes, and his arm tightens around her. “Me too,” he agrees quietly, not specifying what about. Then again, that was a river of babble, so she figures that response is legit. Before she can say more, though, his stomach lets out an enormous rumble and he grimaces, rubbing it with the hand not tucked around her.

“That’s going to be a problem,” she says, looking down at it, and then up at him, trying not to seem as worried as she feels. She might be hungry, but she can deal with it. Steve has an actual physical need for calories; if he doesn’t have enough, he’ll get ill and weak and his body will start having serious problems.

“It’ll be fine,” he says, leaning his head back against the shed. “I did it through the war. I’ll manage.”

Tony wants to comment on that, on the way he turns into a little bitch when his blood sugar drops, but she keeps her mouth shut, because there’s no need to dwell on it. He’s perfectly aware of the situation, and picking a fight won’t help. “Why don’t you sleep,” she says instead. “You’ll use less energy, and I got enough rest.” It’s not a lie; she feels perfectly awake now. Unfortunately, her usual method of keeping herself entertained is unavailable, as neither her phone nor Steve’s will turn on, as discovered earlier, and thus are about as useful as a brick.

It’s an indication of how tired and hungry he must be that he doesn’t argue, just says, “Okay,” and closes his eyes. He doesn’t go inside the shed, but Tony doesn’t fight with him on that, either. It’s much warmer with him out here next to her, and at least this way one of them won’t have straw in their hair.


	2. Concerning Hobbits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which disgruntled arboreal verdance expresses its discontent.

Steve opens his eyes again a few hours before dawn and lets her get a little more sleep, but she wakes at sunrise when he gets up from the ground next to her. She keeps her eyes closed, feigning sleep as he slips out of the jacket as he goes, tucking it around her shoulders. His hand rests on her right shoulder for a moment before he straightens and leaves, and she opens her eyes to watch him go.  There’s a stream in the woods nearby, and he’ll probably check the perimeter as best he can while keeping out of sight of whatever hobbit farmer owns this little shed.

 

Tony wakes Bilbo, who jumps, his eyes popping open. He sits up with a jolt, and she’s glad she’d stayed back and called his name instead of shaking him; it’s long practice, after living with a group of PTSD-prone superheroes, and Bilbo’s fight or flight reaction is sadly familiar.

 

“Good morning,” she says, watching him relax the grip on his little sword.

 

“Ah,” he says, letting out a breath. “Indeed. Good morning, Miss Stark.”

 

“Tony,” she says, as she had the day before. He inclines his head, and finally acquiesces.

 

“Very well. Good morning, Tony.” He clears his throat, pulling his pack closer. “I’ve plenty of food, if the both of you are hungry?”

 

As though summoned by the thought of food, Steve reappears behind her, and she glances up at him, fighting back a laugh at the mental image. He sends her a look, but she just shakes her head. “Very,” she says. “I’m all right, but Steve has a- a medical condition where he needs to eat, or he can grow very weak-“

 

“I’m fine,” Steve says firmly. “Honestly. She’s exaggerating.”

 

“I’m not. We can repay you-“ Steve shoots her a look, and she sighs. “Somehow, but if you have any extra food, Steve should-“

 

“Tony.”

 

She glares up at him, but Bilbo forestalls the argument neatly. “Oh, goodness, there’s plenty! I always overpack, hate the thought of being hungry.” He hands them both a neat chunk of bread; it smells sweet, and isn’t very large. Tony’s about to hand hers to Steve, as much of it as he’ll take (which is probably none of it, but she can try), but Bilbo waves her off. “It’s a recipe I learned from the men of Dale, far to the east. Waybread, very filling. The elves make a version of it, I hear- a small bite is enough to sate a grown man’s appetite.”

 

“Lembas,” Tony says without thinking, and Bilbo brightens, nodding.

 

“Yes, just so! Though this recipe tastes rather more savory, in my opinion. Lembas was rather- well, plain. Not very flavorful. And I find myself to be picky when I have the opportunity to be so. I included honey and lemon, and it turned out rather well, if I say so myself.” He goes on a bit more, describing how he’d tested the recipe, and Tony takes a careful bite. It’s delicious, Bilbo’s right.

 

Steve’s is gone by the time she glances over, and he nods, flushing a little. “I feel full,” he admits. “Surprisingly so.”

 

“Wonderful,” Bilbo says with a smile. He finishes his own bread, leaving Tony nibbling slowly on hers, and brushes the crumbs from his hands. “Well, I must say I feel a good deal improved after a night’s rest. If we move quickly, we should be able to make it to Bree by this evening. That is, if you’re willing to travel through the day?”

 

“That’s what we were thinking,” Steve agrees. He looks at the horizon, where the sunlight has just barely cleared the tree line. “Better to keep moving with those things still on the road.”

 

“Yes, I quite agree.” Bilbo sobers for a moment, but then he nods, pulling himself to his feet and gathering his walking stick. “When you’re ready, let’s be on our way.”

 

Tony’s stiff as they start off; she might get thrown around in the armor on a regular basis, but thirty-four is too damned old to be sleeping sitting up on the hard ground. Steve, of course, looks no worse for wear, and Bilbo doesn’t seem bothered, either, for all that outwardly he looks older than both of them. She makes a face at the back of both of their heads. Steve turns and glances back at her; she blanks her expression, but he sends her a faint smirk as though he knows exactly what she was doing. She finds herself returning the smirk despite herself.

 

It’s clear that this situation is going to require them to work together, and the night before hadn’t been so bad. They don’t need to talk about anything; they can just cooperate, and maybe things will resolve themselves on their own. It’ll be fine.

 

Bilbo’s plan, as he’d laid it out to them, follows what they remember from Fellowship of the Ring (well, what Steve remembers- Tony recalls a lot, of course, but Steve has near-perfect recall, because of course he does). They’ll enter Buckland as quietly as they can and, instead of following the Great Road to the east, they’ll travel through the Old Forest, with which Bilbo is familiar from his wanderings, though only on its edges. The plan also means that they’ll have to cross through the Barrow-downs to reach Bree, but he seems confident that that will be safe enough if they’re sure to cross during the day.  “After all,” he says, leading the way to the Buckland-gate, “ghosts and wights only appear in the dark, don’t they?”

 

He sounds remarkably blasé about the whole business, but Tony suspects that’s only because he doesn’t want to think about the dangers ahead. Personally she’d rather risk the road than deal with a potentially hostile forest where the trees are actually out to get you, but Steve makes a good point when he reminds her that they have no weapons.

 

They also have no cell service, which yes, okay, that was the first thing Tony had checked the day before, but now it feels like she's grabbing her phone every ten seconds to look at it and its complete lack of satellite connection. It's also rapidly losing its battery, and she makes a face, tucking it into her pocket. Her hand keeps twitching towards it as they walk, unable to stifle the habit. 

 

They draw a fair bit of notice from the hobbits when they enter Buckland, both of them having to duck to get through the arch in the hedge, but they’ll be through and gone before they draw too much of a crowd, or so they hope. Bilbo stops to talk to another hobbit, who shares his mop of sandy hair, and introduces him as an old friend, Rorimac Brandybuck. Rorimac looks more than slightly dubious, but he leads them to the hedge at the far side of Buckland, to a tunnel that goes beneath it, blocked by a solid wooden door.

 

“Be careful,” he says, clapping Bilbo on the shoulder and gesturing for them to proceed. “The Old Forest is a peculiar and dangerous place. Be on your guard inside.”

 

“We’re just off for a short adventure!” Bilbo calls cheerfully. “Naught to worry over, Rory!” He disappears down and through, and Tony goes to follow.

 

Rorimac says quietly, “Mind the paths. They tend to change. The trees…” He trails off, shaking his head. “Keep him safe, if you wouldn’t mind.”

 

“We will,” Steve says, and Rorimac nods, stepping back. Tony has to nearly crouch to make it the whole way through, and she’s fairly certain Steve has to crawl behind her for a bit, as he’s brushing off his knees when he emerges in the dim light. It’s odd; though the sun had been shining in Buckland, here the air seems thicker, more humid, almost as though the light doesn’t fully reach through the trees.

 

God, Tony hates nature.

 

An hour later, having walked through about six spider webs and been smacked in the face by unnumbered branches, she really hates nature. “Maybe you’ll have to wrestle a bear,” she suggests to Steve, speaking up for the first time in some while. It’s rather like talking in a library, as though any moment the trees are going to shush her. “That’d be entertaining.”

 

“Please don’t jinx us,” Steve mutters behind her. She hears a quiet knocking sound, as though he’d rapped his knuckles against the nearest tree, and laughs quietly.

 

The trees sway and creak and, she swears, groan. But… there’s no breeze.

 

In the front of the line, since he at least academically knows the way, Bilbo clears his throat, looking up at the trees around them with wide eyes. “Quicken pace,” he announces, and they follow without argument.

 

As the sun moves across the sky, they follow the path through the trees, up and over and down hills, through valleys, and skirt along streams. They mustn’t drink the water, Bilbo says firmly, sharing his canteen with them. And they must be sure to stick to the path, and not leave it. He’s travelled through such a forest before, much larger than this one, and learned his lessons the hard way. Nothing good ever comes from leaving the path or drinking the water in such a place, unless they wish to be lost for days or fall into an enchanted sleep.

 

Tony withholds her questions, wanting desperately to confirm that he’s speaking of the quest for the Lonely Mountain but not wanting to pursue the subject when he looks so pained, speaking of it. The one time she’d asked about his other adventures, earlier that morning, he’d simply said that he wanders about Eriador on occasion, and nothing at all about dwarves or a dragon. Taking the hint, she’d subsided, although she’s burning with curiosity and imagines Steve must feel the same way.

 

They pass a large spider web, tattered and to all appearances abandoned, and Bilbo shudders a bit, one hand on his sword hilt. Nothing seems to be nearby, though, Steve shaking his head and shrugging when Tony looks questioningly at him. In fact, the whole trek through the forest seems to be much easier than expected, she thinks, which is of course when things go completely wrong.

 

They’ve covered a good amount of ground, and they stop near a clear-looking stream to rest, Bilbo once again reiterating the danger of drinking the water. He perches on the exposed root of an enormous old willow tree, taking a drink from the canteen and passing it to Tony and then to Steve before he caps it and puts it back in his pack. “I should think we’re nearly through,” he says, looking at the wide stream next to them; it doesn’t look too deep, and lilies cover much of its surface, but none of them are about to risk it. “It’s only a small blip on my maps. I wouldn’t think it would take more than a day to reach the other side.”

 

Tony almost manages to keep from saying it, but it’s as though her tongue has a mind of its own (insert witty pun here, she thinks to herself). “Okay, now you jinxed us.”

 

“Jinxed?” Bilbo asks, brow furrowed.

 

“You said that, and now the opposite thing will happen,” she says, withholding a sigh. “Even aside from the way fate always seems to have it in for the Aven-- for me and Steve, saying something’s sure to happen is just asking for trouble.”

 

“Hm,” Bilbo says, looking a bit like he thinks she’s gone mad. She huffs.

 

“Come on, Steve, back me up, here.”

 

“Shh,” he says, staring at the water. She raises her brows.

 

“You did not just shush me, Rogers.”

 

“Tony,” he says sharply, pointing. She spins, looking in that direction, and sure enough, there’s a ripple coming up beneath the water. It’s a stream, though, big enough to have a visible current, and she’d brush it aside were it not for the fact that the ripple is moving towards them, perpendicular to the direction the water’s flowing downstream.

 

“Shit,” she says, taking a step back. “Bilbo, get up.”

 

“Everyone move away,” Steve says, his voice in full Cap mode.

 

Tony takes another step back automatically, long since trained to respond to that tone, but she hits something solid where nothing had been before. She spins, but there’s nothing there, just empty air…. and a willow branch wraps tightly around her waist, pinning her arms to her sides and yanking her sideways towards the tree. She yelps, grabbing for Steve automatically, but her fingers don’t have time to do more than brush his sleeve before she’s dangling in midair, kicking and flailing. “Fuck fuck fuck!”

 

“Tony!” Steve leaps for her, but another vine grabs him, too, twisting around his knees and dragging him back to earth with a thump. “Bilbo, get out of here!”

 

Bilbo’s sword is out, though, and he charges forward with a yell. “Drat you, tree!” he shouts, chopping at the vines holding Steve fast. The sound of groaning, creaking wood fills the air. “Let go, you cursed weed! I’ve pulled up bigger than you from my garden!”

 

Tony twists around, getting her hands wrapped around the branch suspending her and, for lack of a better option, biting down hard. Another vine tangles around her braid and drags her head back, and she shrieks as it throws her to the ground, a root climbing over her like a snake and tightening.

 

Bilbo leaves off from Steve’s knees for the moment as Steve seems as though he can nearly kick free, hurrying over to help Tony, who is starting to have trouble getting air. Her ribs, healed as much as they can be from the arc reactor that once sat in the midst of her ruined sternum, aren’t strong enough to bear this much pressure for long, and she starts to turn a bit blue as she gasps. Another root starts to crawl over her neck, and she struggles even harder, trying to free her arms.

 

Bilbo, en route to her, trips over another root that lifts a foot out of the ground right in front of her feet. He hits the ground and the vines catch him too, wrapping snugly around his wrists and legs. His sword falls from his grip as they pull him back, away, out of Tony’s sight, and she hears a splash. She lets out a strangled sound, twisting, but can’t see, can only just see the top of Steve’s head before it, too, is yanked away. “Steve!” she manages to shout with what feels like the last of her breath.

 

There’s another, louder splash, and then silence.

 

Tony pants, fights to draw in air, reaches that point of panic where she stops thinking with any sort of sense and can only struggle, fight to be free. Steve, and Bilbo, they’re under the water, they’re drowning, being drowned by this cursed tree of all things and she can’t get to them, she’s going to suffocate and they’ll be lost- and Steve- she’d never have a chance to- to tell him how sorry she is-

 

The edges of her vision go dark, and slowly the spots overtake her sight. Her limbs are heavy, and she’s lost the strength to struggle. As she falls limp, she hears a voice shouting as though from far in the distance.

 

“You let them out again, Old Man Willow!”


	3. In Goldberry's House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our Heroes wonder what on Middle Earth is going on.

Tony opens her eyes to see not vines and leaves, but wooden rafters. She sits up, looking around with wide eyes, but there’s nothing to see, just the bed she’s lying on in a small room with whitewashed walls, a window with its shutters closed, and a door cracked slightly open.

 

She shoves back the covers and rolls to her feet, which she belatedly realizes are bare. So is the rest of her, beneath a shift of some sort that feels like linen. The wooden floor is pleasantly warm beneath her feet, though, and she moves as silently as she can to the doorway, opening the door wide enough to peer through. There’s light coming down the hallway towards her, and she slips out, weight on the balls of her feet as she creeps forward, ready to attack anything that comes at her.

 

Nothing does, though. She reaches a circular room, a fire crackling merrily in the fireplace and a woman sitting, sewing something on her lap. She’s surrounded by pots and ewers full of water, lilies and flowers floating on every inch of each surface, and the overall effect is that she’s sitting in the midst of a little pool. Tony takes all of this in, wondering if she could make it to one of the irons by the fire, when the woman looks up, and smiles brightly.

 

“Oh good, you’ve awoken!” she says. Her voice is odd, somehow, a bit floaty-sounding. “I wondered if you’d sleep until morning like your friends.”

 

“My friends,” Tony says, swallowing hard. “Where are they? Who are you? What is this place?”

 

The woman’s eyes sharpen somehow, and look almost metallic in the firelight, a bright, shining silver. Her smile doesn’t fade, though, nor does it grow any less welcoming. She holds up one finger. “Your friends are in my second guest room.” She nods to the door on the other side of the fireplace, opposite from the hallway Tony had come from. “They’re quite well, but asleep. They drank the river water when Old Man Willow pulled them in, but they will wake with the sun.”

 

She raises a second finger. “I am Goldberry, daughter of the River, and I mean you no harm, nor to your friends. I brought you to this place.”  A third finger. “This is my home, and that of my husband, Tom Bombadil. You need fear no tree shadows nor dark waters while you rest beneath its roof.”

 

Tony’s knees feel abruptly weak, and she sits on the bench next to the sturdy wooden table. “Thank you.” It doesn’t quite feel like enough, saying only that, but Goldberry’s smile softens again.

 

“You are very welcome, Antonia Stark.” She goes back to her sewing. “There is fresh bread and milk. Eat, and drink. Tom will return on the morrow, back from the borders.” She nods to the table, and Tony looks, startled to see a pitcher and cup, and a plate of bread that she’d swear hadn’t been there a moment before.

 

“Tony,” she says softly, before her head snaps up. She hadn’t said-

 

“There was a small pouch and a card in your pocket,” Goldberry says. She gestures to the small pile of things next to her. “I have your things here. Your name was on the card.”

 

Right. Tony swallows hard. “Ah, about that-“

 

“I believe it would be best to discuss things with your friends awake.” She smiles, the needle still moving through the fabric even though she’s not looking down at it. “Things often make more sense in the morning.”

 

“Right,” Tony says, breaking her fast as requested. Food sounds great, right about now. She’ll deal with the rest in the morning. Her mind feels a bit foggy, but strangely, she’s not alarmed by it. In fact, she hasn’t felt this warm and comfortable in a long time.

 

The bread is gone after only a few minutes, and she drinks the milk as well, only belatedly wondering if she should have checked somehow to see if it was drugged. She stands. “Can I see my friends?”

 

Goldberry nods to the doorway, and Tony pads barefoot in that direction, arms crossed over her breasts. Sure enough, Bilbo seems to be snoring happily in the first room she sees, and Steve’s in the second. He’s not snoring, but he’s definitely asleep, his breathing deep and even and his face relaxed. Sleepily, Tony stands and watches him for a while; she’s not sure for how long, but eventually she yawns, and then yawns again. The trek back across the house seems like such a long way.

 

She’s not really awake as she climbs into the bed next to Steve, but he doesn’t wake to protest. She keeps her back to him and pulls the covers up to her chin, her eyes already closed. After a little while, he rolls over onto his side to wrap an arm around her waist, letting out a long breath into her hair.

 

Tony wakes to the sound of birds outside the window, the wooden shutters now wide open to let in the light. On the chair next to the bed, there are clothes folded neatly, brown boots nearby. The bed is empty, and she wonders if she’d dreamt climbing into bed with Steve entirely, which leads to remembering that she’d done that very thing, had climbed into bed with Steve when they’d been very firmly no longer together for some time, now. Her cheeks are red as she dresses.

 

In the pile of clothes are a warm pair of leggings- not wool, but some sort of soft, warm material nonetheless, and tall, thick socks. There’s a soft linen shift that comes down to her shins, and a heavier green dress with an odd system of laces that takes her a few minutes of trying to sort out. The sleeves lace snugly to her forearms, which is helpful, and the laces on the skirt can kilt it up so the skirts only fall to her calves, out of the way for walking, instead of all the way to the ground. The boots are leather, soft and sturdy, and her own belt is resting on top of the pile.

 

Her cheeks are still red when she decides she’s done the best she can and goes to join the rest of them. She can hear Bilbo talking, and Goldberry, and sure enough when she emerges from the hallway there they are, Bilbo eating and Goldberry sitting at a loom that Tony hadn’t noticed the night before. Steve’s sitting next to Bilbo at the table, and he looks up at Tony, nodding, and then looks away again, his cheeks faintly pink beneath the stubble that's definitely starting to turn into more of a beard.

 

“Morning,” she announces, determined to ignore the awkwardness.

 

Goldberry’s smile is welcoming again. “Good morrow, Tony Stark.” She gestures to the table, and Tony goes, sitting next to Bilbo. In front of Steve is the small pile of what had been in their collective pockets: their wallets, useless here, a couple of Chapsticks, the keys to his bike. No phones, though, as previously determined.

 

He and Bilbo are wearing new clothes, too, Bilbo’s in the same style of his trousers and jacket from before, and Steve in a more medieval-style shirt and tunic. His leather jacket is, to her dismay, nowhere to be seen. “Goldberry said that we shouldn’t wear our clothes again after they were so drenched in the enchanted water,” Bilbo volunteers, seeing Tony looking. “And yours were a bit… ruined by the tree.”

 

Tony sighs. Her tailor is going to kill her, but nothing to be done about that now, she supposes. “Your jacket?” she asks Steve hopefully, but he shakes his head.

 

“Ripped by the root when it grabbed me.” He looks as sad as Tony feels; he’d loved that jacket.

 

“I’ll get you a new one,” she promises. She reaches out, as though to grab her hand, but then remembers halfway through the gesture that she probably shouldn’t, and lets her hand drop to the table. He looks at it, then up at her, and smiles faintly, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

 

“That’s okay,” he says, but she shakes her head.

 

“I will. Don’t argue with me, Rogers.”

 

“All right,” he says, brows raised. Then, “Thanks, Tony.”

 

“Sure.”

 

Of course, they have to get home again for her to do that, but one thing at a time. She eats until she’s full, but Goldberry just keeps weaving, and none of them feels comfortable interrupting her. Bilbo shrugs, stepping outside to the porch for a smoke, and Steve follows, leaving the door open. Tony goes over to sit on the stool by the fire and watch the loom. It’s oddly mesmerizing, watching it click and clack. Back and forth and back again, over and over, she keeps watching it, until she looks up and the light is different, the sun sinking lower towards the horizon.

 

She blinks, looking up at the doorway, and then gets up to go check, her brow furrowed. “Wasn’t it just… morning?” she says, coming up behind Steve.

 

He blinks at the fading light. “I thought it was afternoon. Wasn’t it?”

 

Bilbo straightens from where he’d been leaning on the stone porch railing, blowing smoke rings. “No, it- it must be nearly sunset.” He sounds confused, and turns to look up at them. His pupils are blown wide. “I was just thinking of the- of my adventures- just for a moment.”

 

“It was only a moment,” Tony agrees, feeling vaguely disjointed, and a little worried. But still calm, though, overall. Such a peaceful place, this house. Goldberry’s singing inside, now. A pretty song, light and airy, like a rippling brook, although Tony can’t quite understand the words.

 

Steve hums, and when he glances down, she can see that his eyes are the same, his pupils blown wide in the firelight from inside the doorway. It’s full dark now, and that- that should worry them, it definitely should. Tony knows that it should, but it doesn’t. Isn’t that just the strangest thing?

 

“Your eyes,” she says, puzzled.

 

He blinks, but they don’t change. “Yours, too,” he says softly, stepping closer. To get a better look, of course, that must be the only reason. His face is just an inch or so above hers, her eyes caught in his, the same way they always seem to be when she looks at him. Like a lock clicking into place, whenever their gazes catch. Annoying at times, but nice, she’d always thought. She tilts her chin up a bit.

 

And he leans down a bit more. His mouth is just a breath from hers; they breathe the same air. She hadn’t thought she’d ever breathe again there for a moment, and all she could think of was that she’d never said she was sorry-

 

_Hey, come merry dol!_

_Hobbits, men, and ponies all!_

_We are fond of parties, now let the fun begin!_

_Let us sing together!_

 

A voice breaks out in song just beyond the house, and they both jump backwards, Tony’s back thumping into the doorframe. A man comes skipping up the front steps to them, a wide smile on his face. His face is clean-shaven, and he’s dressed in green and yellow, with a pointed hat on his head. “Hey now, merry dol! Be welcome, my friends!”

 

He sweeps inside, skipping all the way, and twirls Goldberry about in a circle as they sing and laugh. Tony finds herself laughing even as she’s simultaneously fighting back a wave of awkward, because the skipping is just… odd. But even as she wonders what kind of weed this guy smokes, she lets herself be sat down with Steve and Bilbo, more food placed before them. There’s more singing, too, Bilbo composing some verses on the fly and Tom skipping about the room, hazy with firelight and smoke. It’s late in the night before Tony remembers that they really need to talk to their hosts.

 

Steve comes back to it first. He shakes his head a little, as though to clear it from the smoke of Tom’s and Bilbo’s pipes. “Sir,” he says, “thank you for your hospitality. But in the morning, we need to make for Bree.”

 

Bree. Tony pictures it, dark and dreary, not warm and filled with music like this place. She doesn’t want to leave, and yet- they do need to, don’t they?

 

“We’re not sure of the way,” she says, looking up at Steve and then over at Bilbo, who nods.

 

“That’s right. We’ve lost the path.” He looks distraught. “We’ll never find it again.”

 

“But I shall guide you!” Tom says cheerily. “Straight through to the other side. You’ll have no trouble!”

 

All three of them are relieved, and Steve sits back down next to Tony. Goldberry has gone back to her loom and is weaving again, the click-clack click-clack click-clack making Tony’s eyes want to close. She lays her head on Steve’s shoulder, and he sighs, relaxing a bit more.

 

“Let’s have another song!” Tom requests. “Mr. Baggins, are you up for it?”

 

Bilbo sets down his pipe. “Oh, I suppose so!” He pauses to think. “The one I have in mind isn’t all too cheerful, though.”

 

“Well, the sad songs are just as important as the happy ones, aren’t they?” Tom says, still smiling but looking a bit less bright. “Otherwise, how would we ever know when we were happy? Go on, share the song with us!”

 

Bilbo’s smile has changed, grown much sadder. “Quite right, I suppose. Quite right. Well, it’s not my song, really, but I played a part in it. Here it is.” He hums a few bars, deeper notes than Tony would have expected from him.

 

_Far over the misty mountains cold_

_To dungeons deep and caverns old_

_We must away, ere break of day,_

_To claim our dragon-cursed gold._

_The pines were roaring on the height,_

_The winds were moaning in the night._

_The fire was red, it flaming spread;_

_The trees like torches blazed with light._

_The bells were ringing in the dale_

_And men they looked up with faces pale;_

_The dragon’s ire more fierce than fire_

_Laid low their towers and houses frail._

_The king is come unto his hall_

_Under the Mountain dark and tall._

_The Worm of Dread is slain and dead,_

_And so all dwarven foes shall fall._

 

The room falls silent as his voice fades on the last note, the only sounds the crackling of the fire and the click-clack of Goldberry’s loom. “Perhaps,” she says after a long moment, “you’ll have new songs to share with us when you come back this way, Bilbo Baggins.”

 

“Yes,” Bilbo says, clearing his throat several times. “I hope I shall.”

 

She stands, and Tom rises to take her arm. At some point, he’d lost his pointy hat, and now wears a crown of autumn leaves, decorated with small, red berries. He doesn’t look young or old, but also looks both young and old at the same time. His beard covers his chin, thick and pointed. Goldberry’s green dress is shot through with silver, and the golden flowers on her girdle seem to move, as though they’re floating in water. Her hair moves like a current. Tony stays very, very still in her seat, and Steve’s shoulder has tensed beneath her head.

 

“To bed, I think,” Goldberry says. “You have walked a long path to get here, and tomorrow’s will be longer still. Sleep and heal another night, and Tom will guide you to the edge of the forest in the morning.”

 

She smiles, resting her fingertips on Bilbo’s shoulder as they pass, and they disappear up the stairs into the darkness. Bilbo yawns, standing. “I think I’m off as well,” he says, sending them both a sad, tired smile. “Sleep well.”

 

He douses the fire as he goes, and the room plunges into darkness, faint light from the moon coming in through the windows. Tony lets out a long breath and stands, exhaustion falling over her like a blanket. “We should talk about this,” she says, the words coming slowly, as though from far away.

 

Steve is blinking, shaking his head again. “Yeah,” he agrees around a yawn. “In the morning.”

 

Tony frowns. “We should,” she starts, but can’t remember what she was about to say.

 

“Yeah,” Steve agrees again.

 

She sighs. “All right,” she says, not quite sure what she’s responding too. She really needs some sleep.

 

She heads back down the hallway opposite Bilbo’s and Steve’s rooms, heading to the one she’d first woken in. It doesn’t seem strange that Steve follows her, shedding his tunic and shirt and toeing off his boots. Nor does it feel odd for her to pull off the green dress and the leggings underneath, tugging off her own boots. The shutters are open in this room, too, letting in the moonlight and the cool night air.

 

She turns, looks up at Steve. His jaw has the beginning of a beard, she realizes; he never has so much as stubble, always shaves meticulously every morning. But there’s nowhere to do that, here. “Come on,” she says, and as a breeze blows through the open window, she’s abruptly aware of the fact that she’s wearing nothing beneath the shift. “Bed.”

 

She climbs beneath the covers, moving as close to the wall as she can, and he follows her into the bed. The only way they fit is if they both lie on their sides, but that’s comfortable and familiar, and Tony can’t quite think why it shouldn’t be, Steve’s arm tucked comfortably around her waist and her hand resting on his, his breath warm on the nape of her neck. Her hips fit snugly back into his, like two puzzle pieces slotted together.

 

“Night,” she whispers, her eyes falling closed without much input from her.

 

His breath puffs against her skin. “Night,” he whispers back.

 

They sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The author humbly apologizes for the minor alterations to Tolkien's verses, and would like to add that Bilbo's verses would be a lot better. Alas, the author has no skill at poetry whatsoever.


	4. The Barrow-downs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our Heroes venture out once more into the unknown, but Do Not Skip.

It’s Tony’s turn to wake early and slip out of bed, dressing and leaving Steve to sleep. He rolls over when she leaves, burrowing into the warm spot she’d left behind and letting out a little snore. She doesn’t bother to bite back her smile, watching him for a moment from the doorway and then making her way to the great room.

 

There’s no sign of Goldberry, but there are three brown cloaks, leather packs, and sets of gloves folded on the table bench, and warm bread and jam steaming on the table. She eats her fill and steps outside, pulling on one of the cloaks and a pair of gloves that fit her hands as though they were made for them. She finds Goldberry down the hill by the river, but stays well back from the water, watching the River-daughter do the washing.

 

“Thank you for the clothes,” she says, folding her arms. “I didn’t say yesterday, but… thank you. It’s so much.”

 

“And very little at the same time,” Goldberry says, her hands disappearing beneath the water. “Your path will be long, and dark. I can give you some small things to make the walking easier.”

 

Tony sighs, looking up at the sunlight through the trees. “Okay, but when has my path not been long and dark?” she mutters.

 

Goldberry laughs, a sound like water rippling over stones, the crash of a waterfall. “Looking back is as important as looking forward,” she says, folding a wet gown. Tony would move to help, but she’s a bit wary of the water, even just on the wet cloth, and Goldberry doesn’t offer it to her. “Mr. Baggins’ road will be even darker than your own. Help him laugh when you can, Woman of Iron.”

 

Tony shoots the back of her head a look. “Know a big blond guy with a hammer, do you, milady?”

 

Goldberry chuckles again. “I suppose I do, after a fashion.”

 

Tony’s eyes narrow, but she pushes back the automatic flare of I hate magic and carries on. “Do you know why we’re here? Are we really here?”

 

“As to the second, I cannot answer that. I don’t pretend to comprehend the workings of Illuvatar. But as to the first…” She pauses, and reaches back to fetch another garment. Her arm looks spotted with age, its skin fine and slightly wrinkled, but still strong. “Mr. Baggins’ little bauble. You know of it.”

 

“I know… something.” Tony stares at her arm, at the fall of her hair, now more silver than gold. “I’m not sure. What I knew… happened differently. Things aren’t the same here.”

 

“And your Captain knows what you know.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Hmm.” Goldberry’s silent for a long few minutes, her hands working steadily as she scrubs at the cloth and then wrings it dry, repeating the process, over and over, scrubbing and wringing. Tony feels like she could get lost in the rhythm of it again, the way she had the day before, but she blinks, forcing herself back into the moment. Goldberry smiles, glancing back at her, and her face looks young again. “Even the wise cannot see all ends, and I do not claim to be among their number. All I can suppose is that if you are here, then you are meant to be here, and events will unfold as they will. Perhaps they will turn more easily towards the light, with you here.”

 

She sets the last of the damp laundry into her basket, and climbs out of the water, her feet bare on the grass. The water gleams like diamonds on her skin. “There are some people, I’ve found, who cause ripples wherever they go. And that is no bad thing.” She pats Tony’s arm. “Come. You’ll leave us soon.”

 

Tony follows her back up to the house, and a little while later finds herself with Steve and Bilbo, waiting for Tom Bombadil to return so that they can depart. Goldberry waits with them, and pins on their cloaks with little brooches shaped like oak leaves. “My weave will not help you pass unseen as the elves can,” she says with a faint smile, stepping back. “That is not in my power. But your clothes and your boots will be hard to soil, and will rinse cleaner than others might. Now that you’ve worn them, you will find it hard to lose them.”

 

“Thank you, Lady Goldberry,” Steve says. It doesn’t sound silly coming out of his mouth the way it does Tony’s. The honorific doesn’t sound silly coming from Bilbo, either, nor does his bow look odd. Tony hates the both of them a little, being so damned proper and graceful; Goldberry sends her an amused look, as though she knows what Tony’s thinking. Tony reminds herself to tell Steve about the conversation down by the river, once they’re out of everyone’s hearing. Maybe when Bilbo’s asleep.

 

“Ho now, merry dol!” Tom returns then, bearing an armful of wood. He hands out three walking staves, one to Bilbo- his old one, polished to a bright shine and nearly looking new. “This stick has come a long way,” Tom says with a broad smile. “Good to keep it with you, my friend, I think.”

 

The two he hands to Steve and Tony look newer, knotty lengths of oak. Tony grasps hers and admires how neatly it fits in her grip, thinking back to all the late nights she and Steve had sparred with the bo staves in the gym. She sends him a tentative smile, and he returns it. “Thank you,” she says to Tom, meaning it.

 

“Hey ho, there are no thanks between friends!” he says, skipping over to his wife and leaning in to kiss her cheek. “Look for me as the sun sets, River-daughter!”

 

They leave the House of Tom Bombadil, then, following Tom’s bounding stride up the path. Tony turns to look back as they round the bend, and sees Goldberry lift a hand in farewell, her hair gleaming in the sun. She waves back, and then they’re gone, the house no longer in sight. A strange, sad feeling grows in her chest, then- an odd sort of thought, that she won’t return to that place again.

 

Following Tom Bombadil through the forest is definitely an adventure in and of itself. The further they walk, the more the fog of the day and night before lifts from their minds, and the reality of the situation sinks back in, at least for Tony’s part. She doesn’t have much time to think about it, though, because Tom is absolutely ridiculous. He bounds ahead and disappears, and they’re left to follow his voice as he calls back to them, singing ditties about the trees and the animals and how they’re terribly slow at following him. Tony half-thinks that his real technique is pissing them off enough to keep going and get to him so they can knock him upside the head, but maybe that’s just her.

 

No, looking at Steve’s expression, which gets progressively more thunderous throughout the day, it’s definitely not just her. They’re stuck at a slower pace, though, because Bilbo’s legs aren’t as long as hers, which in turn aren’t as long as Steve’s, so he’s stuck. Still, he does a good job of not looking too frustrated, taking the lead but looking back often to check on hers and Bilbo’s progress. Every time his eyes meet hers, though, he turns a little pink. It’s a lot like the early days of their relationship, when everything was new and they were growing closer. Except the angry words and the battle over Bucky are still between them, and now there’s no sex to make things easier. They’re just… stuck.

 

The nights sleeping together in Goldberry’s house had been good, though. Definitely good. Just sleeping, of course, but… well. Better, maybe, just sleeping. It’s been a long time since Tony’s slept so well.

 

They reach the edge of the forest when the sun is high in the sky, and Tom leaves them there with a warning not to tarry, and to hold to their purpose. The hills are small and rolling, and they start off, Bilbo giving the entire area a sidelong look as they go and staying quiet, as he’s been all morning, lost in his thoughts.

 

“I’m not sure I remember the history of this place very well,” Steve says after a bit, glancing down at Bilbo and then away. Sure enough, the admission is enough to get Bilbo talking, a historian’s and cartographer’s excitement in his subject washing away his gloom.

 

“Well, of course you know that all of this area, Eriador, from the White Towers to the Greyflood, was once part of the kingdom of Arnor, ruled by the Dunedain, the Men of the West,” he says, gesturing at the hills at large as though they illustrate his points. Steve nods gravely; he probably does know this, Tony reflects. She remembers a lot of pieces, herself, but not how they all fit together. “When Arnor was partitioned off into three kingdoms some two thousand years or so ago, all of the land from the Brandywine to far past Bree was part of the kingdom of Cardolan.”

 

“Amazing that you know so much, for such a long ago time,” Tony observes, thinking of how little written history remains from ancient times in her own universe. Bilbo sends her an odd look.

 

“Well, I should think I would, since it’s all been written down.”

 

She shrugs, unable to really explain her meaning, and he tilts his head. “And there are beings alive today, like Lord Elrond, who lived through it all. Imagine that!”

 

Tony can’t, but she does know Thor, so she knows the feeling.

 

“At any rate, this area, the Barrow-downs, was for a while their capital city. But Cardolan fell, of course, a few hundred years after the hobbits first settled in the Shire. Now it’s a nasty place full of wights who were first drawn here by the sorcerers of Angmar, once upon a time.” He shudders as a cold breeze blows past them. “Not a place I’d care to be after dark. We should move on.”

 

And they do, walking as quickly as they can. And when they reach the tops of the hills, it seems as though they’re making decent progress, but that soon seems to be a trick of the eye, for the journey through the downs takes much longer than they expect. The sun is sinking low in the sky as they crest the top of the largest hill, only to discover that they’re only halfway across.

 

All around them, on the tops of the green mounds, stone circles sit like jagged teeth against the sky, and before them, in the midst of a round depression in the earth, a single large stone juts up. It’s eerie looking, somehow, unmarked and yet still foreboding. Tony looks up at it, and then over at Steve and down at Bilbo. “Methinks someone was trying to compensate for something.”

 

The tension breaks a little as Bilbo bursts into a chuckle, and even Steve grins a bit, grim as he’s started to look. “Bilbo,” he says, “would you be offended if I offered to give you a ride the rest of the way?”

 

Bilbo shades his eyes with his hand to look up at Steve. “In any other situation I expect I would be,” he says, “but if it’ll move us through these hills any faster, I’d let you truss me up in a baby’s basket, Captain.”

 

It’s Tony’s turn to snort at that. “With a big bonnet,” she adds, “and a bright blue bow.”

 

“A pink bow, if you please,” Bilbo says, obligingly climbing onto Steve’s back when Steve crouches down, strapping his walking stick to his back. “If we’re going to do this thing, Miss Stark, let us do it right.”

 

Tony’s snorting progresses into actual laughter at that. “Well, then Steve needs a nanny uniform, too.” Bilbo sends her an odd look. “A nursemaid’s dress?” she tries, and he barks a laugh.

 

“Trot on, noble steed,” he commands, kicking his heels a bit. Steve bears all of this with good grace, a real smile on his face now.

 

“A votre service, monsieur,” he quips, taking off at a brisk jog. Tony follows in his wake, glad to stretch her legs.

 

They stay mostly on the flat, now, winding around the barrow hills and trying to make up time, but slowly, it becomes a race against the sun, and Tony can’t run nearly as far or as fast as Steve can. He’s not about to leave her behind any more than he’d been Bilbo, and after a little while, when they stop to let Tony catch her breath a bit, it’s become clear that they won’t make it through the downs before dark. The shadows have grown longer, and the sun has disappeared behind the clouds, making it seem as though it’s gotten dark at least an hour early. The wind has gotten cold, and sneaks its way in through their clothes, making them shiver.

 

Tony straightens from her crouch, taking a drink from her canteen and looking over at Steve as Bilbo steps out of sight to take a piss. Steve meets her eyes. “Stop or keep going?” he asks. “I can see the path, but it’ll be a lot harder on you.”

 

“I’d rather keep going,” she says, shivering again as she says it. She won’t pull up her hood, doesn’t like the feeling of not being able to see what’s coming from the side. “Better to try and make it out of here than risk waiting out the night. Even if we have to stop, at least we can try to get our backs to something.”

 

He nods, looking around again. She wonders if he feels eyes on them. None of them wants to be here any longer than they have to be, that’s for sure. “I doubt Bilbo will argue.”

 

“Probably not,” Tony agrees, looking around. The shadows stretch out wide around them, the nearest cairn throwing them into darkness. There’s another moment of quiet. “This is a long pee break.”

 

She looks up at Steve. He looks down at her and grimaces. “I’ll go check,” he says. “I heard him muttering a minute ago.”

 

Tony looks around again as Steve steps away. The damned cold wind gusts by again, and she trots off after him. “I’ll just,” she says breathlessly, coming up beside him, “I’ll cover my eyes. And stay with you.”

 

“Sure.” He looks a bit relieved not to leave her behind.

 

But Bilbo’s not where he’d been a moment ago, when Steve had heard him muttering. He’d gone just around the corner, but the spot where he’d been taking a piss is empty (save for the puddle in the dirt, which is how they know he’d been there at all). There are no footprints anywhere in the dirt beyond that point, and their search for any sign of him nearby is futile. They call his name, but nothing responds but the wind.

 

Steve swears, and then waves at Tony, climbing up to the top of one of the hills. He closes his eyes, and Tony goes still and holds her breath, not wanting to interfere with the super soldier hearing.

 

After a moment, he turns to look a bit north and takes a deep, slow breath. “This way,” he says. “Something’s moving.” They start off at a jog.

 

“Could be a distraction,” Tony pants from behind him.

 

“What other choice do we have?”

 

“Fair point.”

 

Maybe they should have hunkered down and waited out the night after all. Maybe they all would have been taken, in that case, with no one to mount a rescue. No way to know; Tony fights down the knot in her stomach and follows Steve. They’ll get Bilbo back. They have to.


	5. The Prince of Cardolan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Most Royal plans are thwarted.

As they run through the cairns, it starts to get foggy. But not in any normal sort of way; the fog seems like it’s encroaching on them from the west, from the direction they’d come, blowing towards them. “Tony,” Steve says, his steps slowing to a walk. She skitters to a stop behind him, too tired to be graceful, and they both stare as it flows up over the hill next to them like liquid nitrogen, flowing down towards them in a wave.  
  
“This isn’t like that acid fog in the Hunger Games,” Tony says, half a statement and half a question.  
  
“No, that’s normal fog.” Steve doesn’t sound too sure about that statement, either.  
  
“Right. Of course it is.” Anything else would be silly. Still, Tony braces herself with a wince as they’re suddenly enveloped. No acid damage, though, so that’s nice, but now they can’t see much of anything at all. It’s thick enough that without a torch or a flashlight, she can barely make out Steve next to her.  
  
She jumps when he grabs her hand, but it’s definitely his hand, not something else’s, warm and solid and familiar. “Don’t wander off,” he says dryly, and she grimaces.  
  
“Why do you assume it’d be me?”  
  
“That question is a trap.” He clears his throat. “Come on, let’s find Bilbo. Whatever this is, it’s not natural.”  
  
Unspoken is the fear that something’s happened, something they can’t stop. There’s no satellite feeds, no infrared to help them find Bilbo’s position. They’re stuck relying on their senses, and those are muffled by fog. In this situation, Steve’s super soldier enhanced hearing and sight, while not quite at the level of a superpower, are the best they’ve got.  
  
In front of them, suddenly revealed by the fog, are two great standing stones, one partially crumbled, that look almost like a gate. Tony doesn’t remember seeing them before the fog when they’d looked out over the hills- and they’re big enough that she should have. The stones loom ominously, as though they’re daring them to move forward. “Oh, no, this definitely doesn’t feel like a horror game. Let’s just go towards the scariest thing on the path. That is absolutely the safest plan.”  
  
“Please don’t talk about horror games right now,” Steve mutters. They move forward through the stones, and she sees him grab for something around his neck as they go, mumbling under his breath. Right, Irish people and standing stones. Fairies and pixies and superstition. Just now, she thinks he might have a point. “Bilbo!” he calls out again.  
  
This time, to their surprise, there’s a response ahead of them and to the east, a distant cry muffled by the fog. Steve picks up the pace, turning in that direction, and Tony hurries to keep up. “Maybe he just wandered off and got turned around,” she pants. Christ, she’s getting tired. This is more running than she’s done in a long time. Serves her right sitting at a desk so much, lately- she needs to hit the obstacle course again. “Remind me not to skip my morning runs when we get back.”  
  
As she says this, her foot catches on an upturned stone, and down she goes. Not just to the ground, but down the side of a cairn, hitting the grass with a thump and rolling downwards into the darkness. She can hear Steve calling after her, but as she reaches the bottom, her back lands hard against a rock, knocking the wind out of her.  
  
The hill was longer than she thought, she thinks, staring up at it. The fog doesn’t reach this far down, and she can see a bit more of what’s around her in the dim light. Turning her head as she tries to draw in air, she stares at a large cairn, its door open and yawning like a great dark mouth, broken stones embedded in the edges like fangs. “Homey,” she wheezes, hearing Steve come down the hill behind her. “Like the Martha Stewart of mausoleums, amirite?”  
  
He doesn’t respond, and she rolls her eyes, pushing herself to her hands and knees and panting down at the ground. “Yeah, yeah,” she gasps. “I know. Save your breath, Tony. Don’t waste your air being a smart ass, Tony. But it’s my signature thing, Steve. It’s what I do.”  
  
There’s a pause, and then the footsteps come closer. Odd, thumping footsteps that on second thought don’t sound at all familiar. Tony looks up, slowly sitting up so she’s on her knees, to see a tall figure looming over her. It’s hard to make out details beyond that it’s a shadowy black thing with weird glowing eyes, but it’s definitely not Steve.  
  
Welp. “Steve would’ve gotten the Harley Quinn reference.”  
  
The thing seems to blink down at her, thrown, and her hand closes around the staff Tom Bombadil gave her. She sweeps it around and up, cracking the thing at the knees and then rolling back onto her feet. It seems… completely unbothered, not even off-balance, and she swears, stepping in for another hit. It blocks it, and she swings low, but it catches the staff. She goes for a groin kick, but her foot… doesn’t connect with anything.  
  
“Wow, dude, that sucks,” she quips. It laughs at her and drags her closer by the staff, the laughter seeming to come not from the figure in front of her but from the ground itself, dark and cold. She grins back, baring her teeth, and goes with the pulling, getting close enough to shove a hand up and forward and bury her fingers in its weird glowing eyes.  
  
It screams.  
  
She’s already darting back, but a hand grabs onto Goldberry’s cloak, dragging her back, and the elbow she sends back in return doesn’t connect. Its other hand grabs her throat, squeezing tight, and her vision goes black as it touches her bare skin.

 

  


 

When she wakes, it’s to an even weirder situation. This whole Barrow-downs business was definitely a mistake, she decides, as she looks around and realizes that she’s lying on a slab in a crypt. One of the cairns, undoubtedly. She, lucky her, seems to be raised up on a dais, her hands folded neatly on her stomach and her limbs weighted down with what could be either shackles or jewelry. There’s a weird, pale light emanating from somewhere in the place, and it’s enough that she can see Steve and Bilbo on the ground next to her. They’re decked out, too, all kinds of jewelry and wearing actual crowns. But what’s concerning her most is the giant sword that’s currently laid out across their throats, waiting for the slightest twitch from either of them to slice open their carotids.  
  
“Fucknuts,” she groans, pushing herself up into a sitting position as movement starts to come from the dark passage beyond where the boys are lying. “Next time, we take the road. We take the fucking road.”  
  
A voice, the same dark, creepy one that had laughed at her before, starts to sing. What is it with the singing in this place? Why does everyone in Middle Earth burst into song every ten seconds? Tony rolls her eyes and climbs down off the dais, her feet landing with a thump as she sheds heavy gold chains and enormous rings, cuffs and torcs and really, just, what the hell?  
  
_Cold be hand and heart and bone_  
_And cold be sleep under stone_  
_Never more to wake on stony bed_  
_Till the Sun fails and the Moon is dead_  
  
“Your rhythm’s off!” she calls. The voice keeps singing. “No, really, do you realize how out of tune you sound? You’re really off-key. My ears are bleeding. Give it a rest.” The voice stops abruptly. “You’d think being dead and all, you’d have all the time in the world to compose a poem with correct meters. This is just pathetic.”  
  
As she’d been speaking, a disembodied arm had crawled over to Steve’s shoulder, and seems to be going for the sword hilt. Tony reaches down and snatches it up, moving it away from any danger of cutting them. “Think again, Imhotep.”  
  
There’s a hissing sound from the passage, but Tony just hefts the sword, seeing Steve’s eyes flickering on the ground. She nudges him with her foot, bringing the sword up to bear at the dark end of the passage. “Oh no, I’m sorry, did I hurt your dead widdle feelings? Did you spend a really long time writing your emo poetry? Poor murderous fucking you!”  
  
The hissing turns into a shriek, and a dark figure swoops out of the darkness at her. She swings and, as it comes at her, slices it right in half like a knife going through butter. It dissipates with a scream that echoes through the chamber, and the stone ahead of them rumbles.  
  
Tony has just enough time to regret taunting it if she’s just gotten them trapped in a cave-in, but then the front of the cairn must collapse, because moonlight suddenly shines in on them, fresh air sweeping into the chamber and vanishing the heavy, oppressive presence that had been there a moment before.  
  
Behind her, a hoarse voice says, “That’s about eight dollars in the swear jar.”  
  
Tony grins, spinning to see Steve sitting up, rubbing his head and frowning when his fingers touch metal. Next to him, Bilbo’s stirring, his hand immediately going to his pocket before he relaxes, looking up at them with a bemused expression. “Where are we?” he asks, looking around and pulling off the bejeweled circlet. “And why am I wearing a crown?”  
  
“We were starring in a dead guy’s passion play,” Tony says, letting the point of the sword drop to the ground. Bilbo just blinks at her.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Just a little death ritual. You guys okay?”  
  
“Death ritual?” Bilbo says slowly.  
  
“Don’t worry, it’s fine.”  
  
“That does not sound fine to me!”  
  
Tony opens her mouth, but Steve talks over her, reaching over to put a hand on Bilbo’s shoulder. “We’re okay now, right? Whatever he was doing is over?”  
  
“Masterfully foiled, if I do say so myself.”  
  
“And you do.”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
Getting to his feet, Steve rolls his head on his neck, running a hand over his throat and up over his beard. “Thanks, Tony,” he says. He looks like he might be about to say more, but then his hand shoots out to the side, grabbing the disembodied arm that had been about to grab another sword lying nearby. He holds it up as it squirms in his grip. “You missed one?”  
  
Bilbo stares at it, and then up at Steve. Then back at the arm. “Well, that’s very- yes.“  
  
His eyes roll back into his head, and he faints dead away, crumpling back down onto the floor with a thump.  
  
From the doorway, there’s a laugh. “Hey now, merry dol! You three have found a pretty pickle!”  
  
Bilbo recovers fairly quickly on the grass outside. Tom sings a little rhyming song that seems to wake him up, and he lies there looking even more confused to see Tom than he’d been before. Tony, meanwhile, is just glad to be out in the fresh air, and Steve clearly feels the same. The fog has vanished as though it had never been, and they’ve moved up the long hill so that they’re away from the Great Barrow, as Tom had called it. Tony doesn’t realize until she gets to the top and sits down next to Steve that she’s still carrying the sword. She lets it thump down into the grass in front of them, her hands feeling a bit empty after they’ve let it go.  
  
“That was fun,” she says dryly, watching Tom go back down the hill towards the open cairn.  
  
“Let’s never do it again,” Steve agrees.  
  
She looks toward Bilbo, now sitting up in the grass and sipping at some water. “Think he’ll be okay?”  
  
“I think people who face down dragons can handle just about anything.”  
  
“True,” Tony agrees, leaning against him a little. He wraps an arm around her shoulders and she leans a bit more, feeling warm for the first time since that morning.  
  
Tom returns with his arms full. He drops the second sword from the cairn next to Steve, and a long black sheath for the one Tony had carried out. “These should serve you well,” he says, watching Steve unsheathe the one he’d been given. Its blade is long and leaf-shaped, like Tony’s, but where hers is cool and cast in blue, his bears runes etched in red and gold. The metal in both blades is strange and light, Tony notices, pulling Steve’s closer for a better look at the alloy. “They were forged by the Men of Westernesse, foes of the Dark Lord who were overcome by the evil of Angmar.”  
  
“I remember taking a spear at Carn Dum,” Steve says suddenly, a shadow passing over his face. Tom’s hand brushes his shoulder, and it leaves.  
  
“Few people remember the men who rest here,” he says quietly. “Sometimes they still walk above the earth, the sons of long-forgotten kings.”  
  
“And what about the daughters?” Tony asks, arching a brow. “The queens and the daughters and all. Is this a men-only burial site, or are they here too?” Maybe, sensibly, they stay dead. Tom seems a bit thrown by the question, and doesn’t answer, because of course he doesn’t. Tony just rolls her eyes.  
  
“Are you sure you don’t want the blue one?” she asks Steve as they get to their feet. “Your color and all.” Her hand tightens a bit protectively on the hilt, and he smiles, looking down at the red and gold blade and re-sheathing it.  
  
“I like this better.”  
  
Bilbo pats his own sword at his hip. “I’ll keep to Sting here, if it’s all the same to you. I’m not sure I could lift one of those.”  
  
Tom laughs at that, a great, booming sound. “Old knives make good swords for small folk,” he agrees. “And the blade you carry has seen battle already at your hand.” He rubs his hands together. “Here is where I leave you again, my friends. But if you should ever find yourselves again in my domain, sing out and I shall come!”  
  
He whistles, and a fat pony comes trotting over the hill to them. Swinging aboard, he leaves them with a wave, tucking a pretty leaf brooch into his pocket to bring back to his fair Goldberry. They watch him go and then start off walking again, and Tony shakes her head. “What is it with all the singing?”


	6. At the Sign of the Prancing Pony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our Heroes geek out just a little bit.

“Finally,” Bilbo says the next evening, when they come in sight of the gates of Bree. They’d stopped for a few hours in the morning, all of them about to collapse, even Steve. After some rest, they’d continued on, and now they’ve finally reached the town, having taken the most roundabout route imaginable. Still, the place seems free of black riders, although Tony knocks on a nearby wooden beam when she thinks it.

 

“The Prancing Pony,” she says, trying not to squee. Steve’s hiding a grin of his own, his eyes bright- even after everything they’ve done through so far, to see such a famous place in real life is enough to throw them. Goldberry and Tom Bombadil might not have been quite what they imagined, and the Barrow-downs might have been terrible, but even in the rain and the mud the Pony is exciting.

 

It’s also dry and very warm, which raises it even a few notches higher in Tony’s book. Bilbo gives a false name to the innkeeper, an old man who looks rather like Santa Claus. He calls a young man named Barliman to lead them to a room upstairs, and Tony exchanges a glance with Steve, trying not to bounce up and down. It’s not quite the same, but it’s Barliman Butterbur at the Prancing Pony!

 

Downstairs, there’s a warm stew being served, just the thing after they’d spent the afternoon walking in the rain. Bilbo seems happy enough to sit with them, but he’s also terrible at acting as though nothing’s going on as he “covertly” peers around the tavern. “My friend doesn’t seem to be here,” he says glumly. “He said to meet him here, and we’re several days late. What if we’ve missed him?”

 

“Maybe he’s just upstairs in his room,” Tony suggests. “Or he’s gone off to look for you.”

 

“Well, in that case we’ll never find him,” Bilbo mutters, picking up his mug and almost burying his face in it. Steve sends Tony a look (she’s not helping), and then glances at the corner.

 

There’s a man at the table, sure enough, but it doesn’t look like Strider. He’s wearing his hood over his face, and they can only see him from the side, but all they can tell is that he looks thin, and that he’s carrying an enormous bow. Young Barliman looks nervous as he goes over to bring food to the man; his hands are shaking, making the tray and its contents rattle.

 

The man takes the food, but all they see of him during the exchange is a clean-shaven chin. And then Steve’s eyes tick back to the opposite side of their table, which is empty. Bilbo’s gone, a handful of coins left on the table for their meal. “Damn,” he mutters, straightening and looking around the room. Tony elbows him; the man at the corner table has stood and is walking toward the stairs, moving as though he’s trying not to look like he’s in a hurry.

 

“It might not be Strider, sixty years too soon,” Steve says softly. “Or it could be. Either way, we have to follow.”

 

Tony nods, and they wait a few seconds before heading for the stairs themselves, Tony grabbing what was left of her bread and pocketing it as she goes.

 

Steve unsheathes his sword in the hall, the blade flickering red and gold in the torchlight as he approaches their door. It swings shut behind the strange man. Beyond it, they can hear Bilbo call out, surprised. Steve’s through the door before Tony can say a word, dragging the strange man back from Bilbo. The stranger moves smoothly, though, pulling a blade of his own.

 

“Who are you?” he demands in a low voice.

 

“Bilbo’s traveling companion. Who are you?” Steve counters.

 

“Peace, Glorfindel, these are my friends!” Bilbo interjects, and Tony turns to gape at the stranger.

 

“Glorfindel?”

 

The elf- for he is an elf- reaches up and lowers his hood, revealing long tawny gold hair and olive skin. He has an ethereally young face, albeit one that’s still wearing a potentially murderous expression, and his eyes are golden brown like a hawk’s. Steve slowly lowers his sword.

 

Glorfindel follows suit. “I beg your pardon, then. I mean no harm to friends of Mr. Baggins.”

 

Steve clears his throat, his ears turning a bit pink as he tries not to stare at the elf. Tony can’t blame him; she’s having trouble herself. “My mistake. We believed you were a threat.”

 

“No offense is taken, I assure you.” The elf’s eyes flick from him to Tony and back. “As Mr. Baggins has said, I am Glorfindel. You seem to know my name.”

 

Tony clears her throat. “Ah, yes. Legends, stories. You’re famous.” Balrog-slayer, leader of armies against the Witch-king, Lord of Gondolin… Tony’s not going to fangirl. She’s really not. God, but he’s pretty, though.

 

The elf has the grace to look embarrassed. “Unfortunately so.” He clears his throat, glancing at Bilbo, who jumps a bit.

 

“Yes, my apologies, Lord Glorfindel. May I introduce Miss Antonia Stark and Captain Steven Rogers, my travelling companions. We have had quite the time avoiding those black riders, I can tell you.”

 

“I imagine so,” he says, looking towards the window. “But it’s not over yet. I fear not everyone downstairs in the tavern can be trusted. Bree may not be safe for you tonight, Mr. Baggins.”

 

Tony looks up at Steve. He looks down at her at the same moment and shakes his head. She nods a bit. He shakes more firmly and she looks over at Glorfindel. “I, ah. I might have an idea.”

 

“Tony.”

 

Bilbo looks back and forth between them, one brow lifting upwards, but Glorfindel sends her a questioning glance. “Yes, Miss Stark?”

 

“Tony, please.” She clears her throat and ignores Steve’s glare. This certainly isn’t interfering. “I think perhaps we should ask the younger Mr. Butterbur for a new room, but not tell the rest of the guests. They won’t expect us to stay here if we know they’re coming.”

 

“A switch,” Bilbo says. “And after I made such a fuss asking for a hobbit-sized bed! That could work very nicely.”

 

Glorfindel nods. “I believe you may be right, Miss Tony.” Close enough, she supposes. The elf smiles faintly. “But as young Mr. Barliman seems to be a bit nervous with me, perhaps one of you should ask.”

 

Steve breathes out sharply through his nose. “I’ll go ask,” he says, returning his blade to its sheath. He disappears through the door before anyone can say another word, and Tony watches him go, torn between feeling guilty for ignoring his unwillingness and relief that he’s going along with the ploy.

 

Barliman seems willing to keep their secret, and soon enough they’ve been moved to Glorfindel’s room some ways down the hall. This room is entirely man-sized and meant for only one, the three beds in the other filled with pillows to make it look as though the three of them are sleeping there.

 

All that’s left to do is wait.

 

Glorfindel sits quietly by the window, staring out and apparently lost in thought, hidden from curious eyes outside by the thick drapes. Bilbo sits at the small table, puffing at his pipe and writing rapidly in one of his books. A record of their adventures, he says; he’s catching up on the time that’s passed since he first left the Shire. There’s a great deal to write. The last few days have been eventful, to say the least.

 

Tony wishes for her cell phone, sitting on the edge of the bed. Steve sits near the fire, close to Bilbo, and takes the proffered pipe every once in a while, puffing on it for a moment before giving it back. Tony bites back a comment about lung cancer; if anyone’s safe from it, it’s a super soldier.

 

After a while, she pulls out the bread she’d saved from dinner, half the loaf she’d been given with her stew, and tosses it to him. He catches it and looks up, startled briefly and then grateful. She sends him a small smile and goes back to studying her fingernails, bored to tears. After a while, she lies down, curling on her side to stare at the fire, too.

 

Her eyes slip closed, and when she opens them it’s hours later, the fire low in its grate and a blanket laid out over her. Steve seems to be sleeping, or at least is resting his eyes, his head leaning back against the wall next to the fireplace. Bilbo has his head pillowed on his arms on the table, and she turns to see Glorfindel in the same spot where he’d been earlier, his eyes open and fixed on a point in the distance.

 

“What is it?” she more breathes than says, not wanting to wake the others. He glances over at her, and then nods to the window, lifting a hand and beckoning her over.

 

“They are coming,” he says softly, his voice like ice. His other hand rests lightly on his sword, leaning against the windowsill, and he reminds her of Natasha, perfectly still but able to burst into movement in an instant.

 

The thought of Natasha makes her suddenly homesick, and she wishes desperately for her dry-witted friend. Any situation looks better with the Black Widow at your back.

 

Glorfindel’s hand brushes her back when she joins him at the window and then falls. On the street below the inn, dark figures on black horses ride up the lane and into the yard, slipping silently from their mounts and vanishing through the door below. When Tony turns to look at the door, a hand on her own sword, she finds Steve already standing, blade out and ready. Glorfindel nods to him but doesn’t stand, just keeps his eyes fixed on the door, unblinking.

 

They don’t hear much at first, or at least Tony doesn’t. Bilbo comes awake at the first creak on the stair, but before he can do more than sit up and reach for his sword, Steve stops him with a finger to his lips. They all stand, waiting, staring at the door. Steve can probably hear the riders’ steps in the hall, but Tony can’t. They wait, hear the slight creak of a door, and then an almighty series of thuds and thwacks. And, a moment later, an unearthly wail of rage. The sound echoes through the inn, waking every patron but leaving them quaking in their beds. Tony’s hands tighten on her sword hilt, but she doesn’t move; none of them do. Not until the clattering of armor-clad feet is gone down the stairs, until the Nazgul swoop outside and swing back onto their horses, taking off at a gallop back down the lane.

 

It’s as though the entire town had been holding its breath and exhales at once. Glorfindel stands, stepping around Tony and looking at all three of them. “Wait here,” he says, disappearing out into the hall and shutting the door behind himself. None of them hears him make a sound.

 

Tony slowly sinks back down onto the bed and watches Bilbo get up and pace, one hand firmly in his pocket. Steve stays where he is, still, but after a moment, he resheathes his sword. Tony wishes she had something clever to say, but nothing’s coming to her, just worry.

 

Glorfindel returns a little while later, empty-handed and with muddy boots. “The Pony’s secure,” he says. “Barliman’s barred the door again until morning, but the night watchman at the west gate is dead.” Tony remembers the young man who’d eyed them suspiciously, eventually letting them in. “Crushed when they broke it down and then rode over it.”

 

That’s her fault, she thinks, looking out towards the window. He’s dead because of her; they should have left. But she tried to be clever, thought a ploy from a book would work, and now someone’s been killed. She stays quiet as Glorfindel relays his plans to leave before first light, so few can say which way they’ve gone if anyone should ask. The riders don’t travel as easily in the day, he says; they can do it, but it’s harder for them.

 

“If the two of you wish to be gone, I won’t blame you,” Bilbo says quietly, looking at Steve and then at Tony. “The riders are after me, not you.” He takes a deep breath. “I carry something very dangerous, or so says my friend.”

 

“The wizard was right,” Glorfindel says, resting a hand on the hobbit’s shoulder. “I can sense its power, even though you have it hidden away. You must not put it on, Bilbo.”

 

“That’s what Gandalf said,” Bilbo says. “Although I’ve worn it often enough already.”

 

“It will not be the same now,” Glorfindel says. “Not now that it’s woken. It will try to corrupt you. You must not wear it.”

 

Bilbo shudders, but his hand slowly leaves his pocket and moves to rest at his side. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. It’s just that it’s so helpful, turning invisible.” He smiles faintly. “I’m not much of a burglar without it.”

 

“I think you might surprise yourself,” Glorfindel says. He looks up at Steve. “Bilbo speaks the truth. You would be safer if you left us. The riders will most likely follow after him.”

 

“We want to make sure Bilbo’s safe,” Steve says, glancing at Tony. She nods, but doesn’t say anything herself. He looks back at Glorfindel. “And we need to speak to Lord Elrond. We’ll come with you.”

 

“We don’t have any horses,” Tony says, finally speaking up, but Glorfindel shakes his head.

 

“We’ll go on foot through the marshes,” he says. Bilbo makes a distasteful face, and one corner of Glorfindel’s mouth lifts up in amusement. “Foul they may be, but horses cannot move through the muck. We’ll be able to evade the riders until we reach the other side.”

 

He nods to the bed. “Rest while you can. I will keep watch.”

 

And so the three of them manage to squeeze into the bed, Steve in the middle and Bilbo and Tony on either side of him. Tony falls asleep after a while, staring at the window and the dark sky beyond.


	7. A Knife in the Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which threats encroach upon our Heroes once again.

The town is silent when they leave, carrying provisions from a shaken Barliman. They let themselves out the smaller east gate, a single guard seeing them off, and make for the hills leading down to the marshes as the sun starts to rise.

 

The marshes are foul, and the less said of them the better. The elf seems unaffected by the gnats, but the two humans and the hobbit are beset by biting insects, and the rain that pours down on them every hour or so doesn’t help matters. They spend a night on a precarious bit of solid ground surrounded by marsh, with barely enough space for the four of them to sleep, but Glorfindel allows them a small fire for a little while, disappearing into the darkness and returning with a deer.

 

To Tony’s surprise, it’s Steve who butchers it, his movements quick and practiced, and they roast the venison over the fire; it’s good and filling, and there’s plenty left for the next day. Tony would make a fuss about bacteria, but Steve doesn’t seem bothered and he’s the one who will need it the most. Watching him wash the blood from his hands in the marsh water, she settles in for the night, and she dreams about a cool, clean bathtub where she washes away all the grime, only to have the water turn to blood, soaking into her skin.

 

They return to solid ground the next day, and Glorfindel leads them on a path that parallels the road but keeps them mostly hidden by the hills to either side. The dirt is red, here, full of clay, and the waters run red like blood. Tony thinks back to her dream and shivers a little as they pass a particularly large marshy pool, mists rising from the water and blowing in the wind.

 

The hills rise higher ahead of them into a line of steeper, rockier heights; they stretch farther to the north, as far as they can see, but the southernmost hill is by far the largest, and topped by an odd shape that resolves into the base of a great fortress as they get closer. “The tower of Amon Sul,” Glorfindel says, glancing back at the three of them. Bilbo nods; he’s stopped here before. “More commonly known as Weathertop. The fortress was destroyed long ago, but we’ll be able to see our enemies for leagues.”

 

“As long as they don’t see us first,” Tony mutters. None of them will start any fires, and so they should be all right. That is, if the Nazgul don’t think to make for the most obvious landmark in the area with the same idea in mind. They won’t have to look far if they do.

 

They settle in a little alcove about halfway to the top of the ruin, and Glorfindel leaves them there. “I must go and look for signs of a friend who was supposed to be in the area,” he says, setting down his pack but keeping his weapons. “I won’t be long. Stay low and keep watch.”

 

“Is it Gandalf?” Bilbo asks, clearly trying not to be obvious about the hope in his voice and failing completely.

 

“No,” Glorfindel says, shaking his head. “One of the Dunedain.” He hands Steve a handful of torches and a flint. “Fire will harm them, but use it only as a last resort.”

 

“I wasn’t planning on hand-writing any invitations,” Steve agrees, and Glorfindel huffs a laugh.

“Nor do we want to die, though. If it comes to that, light the torches.”

 

Tony stares out into the darkness. She’d give just about anything for repulsors right now.

 

They eat a cold dinner of waybread and a few of the remaining apples from Bree. Despite the long walk, Tony finds that her appetite isn’t enormous, and she pushes half of her apple to Steve, who takes it once he determines that she’s really full. He splits it with Bilbo, too, though, and as Tony watches the hobbit inhale the fruit, she realizes that Bilbo’s lost weight, even just in the week or so that they’ve known him. Part of that is the hard walking on the road and the lack of substantial food, but that wouldn’t cause shadowy hollows to start to form in his cheeks.

 

“I’ll watch first,” she offers. Better her now than later, when there will be much less light and they’ll need Steve’s eyes. Bilbo waves her off, though.

 

“No, no, get some rest,” he says, gesturing to their bedrolls. “I’m quite awake. I’ll take it; you both look exhausted.” Of course, he doesn’t look much better, but Tony feels tired enough not to argue. Steve just nods silently, unrolling his bedroll nearest to the edge, and Tony gratefully takes the place between him and the wall. It’s not the drop that bothers her; it’s the wind, and he’s a good bulwark.

 

She curls up on her side facing him, her eyes closing as soon as her head comes to rest on her pack, and the last thing she knows for some time is the feeling of fingertips featherlight on her brow, brushing away the strand of hair that’s been falling across her face all day.

 

She’s not sure what wakes her, but her eyes open to full dark, the stars hidden behind clouds. The moon’s almost new, and there’s barely any light at all to see by. She sits up, trying to get her bearings, and reaches out to the side, finding Steve still next to her. The wind gusts in her face, and she can just barely make out the shape of the hill nearest to them.

 

Steve’s arm tenses beneath her hand, and he sits up slowly. “What is it?” he asks, sounding more awake than she feels.

 

“Not sure.” Something’s not right, though. It’s the same sort of feeling she gets when there’s something wrong in the armor but nothing’s showing up in the diagnostics; something’s triggered her subconscious awareness, but she can’t pinpoint it. “Something doesn’t feel right. Bilbo?”

 

Steve’s already rolling to his feet, his eyes telling him what hers can’t see. “He’s gone.” He reaches down and pulls her to her feet, hands her an unlit torch. “We should check the perimeter.”

 

“He’s gone up,” she says. “Not down. That’s a rough climb in the daylight, much less in pitch black. He’s up there.” And he might not be alone. They both grab for their swords and Steve takes the other torch, pocketing the flint.

 

It’s a long run up the path that spirals up to the top of Weathertop, and once they reach the summit, even Tony can see Bilbo standing at the very the edge of the drop, staring out into the darkness and notably not holding onto anything. She and Steve exchange a glance and he steps off to the side as she moves forward slowly, not wanting to startle the hobbit. “Hey, Bilbo? Friend, pal, matey? This is kinda a bad place to be right now. I could be wrong, but hobbits don’t bounce if they fall a thousand feet, right?”

 

“I felt like I couldn’t breathe,” he says. Tony can barely make out the words; they’re snatched away by the wind as soon as they leave Bilbo’s mouth.

 

“I mean that’s fair, breathing’s important. But let’s take a step back from the edge, okay, buddy? Plenty of oxygen back here on solid ground.” Well. “Solid-er ground. More solid ground. It’s all stone but you know what? Humor me.”

 

He glances back over his shoulder at her, his expression mostly unreadable in the darkness. All she can make out is that he looks… sad. Lost, maybe. “I’m so tired,” he says, and she sees his lips form the words more than hears them.

 

“I get that,” she says softly. Then, more loudly, “I get that. Believe me. I… I’m so tired I can feel it in my fucking bones. Nothing feels right, everything’s going wrong, but you have to keep moving forward, everyone keeps telling you that, even when you don’t want to. You just have to, and it fucking sucks.” She clears her throat. “It really fucking sucks. But you’re my friend, and I don’t want you do jump. Please.”

 

He blinks, his eyes going wide, and his head snaps around as he sees Steve standing just a few feet to one side, ready to leap forward and catch him. “Jump? Oh, no, I- I only came up here to think.” He takes a firm step back from the edge. “I- certainly not! No, indeed!”

 

Well, Tony feels a little stupid now, but the look Steve’s sending her is sad, too, and way too knowing for her comfort. “Let’s go down below, out of the wind, then,” he calls. “Okay?”

 

Bilbo nods, and they both turn to come back towards Tony. And as they turn their backs to the edge, a dark figure rises up in the air behind them, its black robes barely visible against the night sky and its sword unsheathed.

 

Tony realizes that she’d been mistaken, earlier. Now, seeing the Nazgul rise into the air behind Steve and Bilbo like a demonic Elphaba defying gravity, is the moment when she would give anything for repulsors. Her hands even twitch with the motion of firing, even though she has nothing to fire, and she fumbles for her sword instead.

 

“Nazgul!” she shouts, and Steve spins, taking a step closer to the edge. As the rider swoops towards him, he kicks out, striking the creature square in the chest and sending it flying out into the night with a distant screech. Tony stares for a beat, a bit blindsided by the graceful violence. “Huh,” she says, sounding bemused.

 

Steve turns back to look at her with a startled smile, but then his eyes tick upward and to her left, and there’s no more time for talking. “Light the torches,” he says, tossing her the flint and pulling his own sword, covering the distance to the next one in his path in only a few strides. But there are four more of them, not just the one, and they’re all coming at the same time. Tony strikes the flint against her sword blade, swearing repeatedly when the torch doesn’t catch. It smells like it was dipped in oil or pitch, but she’s not having any luck. How hard can this be? “I didn’t get this badge in Girl Scouts!” she calls, frustrated, and Bilbo hurries over, taking the flint from her.

“I’ve got it,” he says sharply. “Go hit them!”

 

That she can do.

 

Fighting with a sword is not the same as she remembers from fencing lessons as a kid. The damned thing is almost as big as she is, and although she can swing it with one hand under the crossguard and one hand controlling the swing with the pommel, it’s awkward, and she’s not nearly as fast as the dementor coming for her. It lifts its own blade- rotted and pitted and who makes their shit, honestly?- to bring it down on her and Bilbo, and she stands, swinging a bit wildly and knocking its sword aside.

 

But it shoves her blade right back over with ease, and she’s not going to win a contest of strength with this thing, not with a weapon she doesn’t know how to truly use. So she uses physics instead.

She steps in close, forcing both of their swords down towards the ground with all of her strength- not an inconsiderable amount, considering the time she spends in heavy armor and working with metal. The Nazgul fights her, of course, yanking upward with an unnatural strength of its own, and she grins, reversing and shoving upward, too. Her sword pommel hits it in what would be its throat if it had one, powered not only by the force from her strike but its own upward momentum. It stumbles back and she takes the opportunity to run it through, shoving the greatsword up beneath its breastplate. The air fills with the scent of burning rot, and Tony gags, yanking backward to try to free her blade.

 

It swipes downward, and sure enough, her blade comes free, broken off at the tip. Screaming, it turns and flees into the night, leaving a trail of foul smoke behind it. Tony swears, but there’s no time to fuss about the broken sword as she turns to block the next one’s blade before it can behead Bilbo, who at that instant successfully lights the torch, the oiled cloth flaring to life in a burst of light.

 

He tosses it up to Tony, who catches it, ducks beneath an enormous sword swing, and shoves the torch into the second Nazgul’s face. She remembers to pull back, this time, and the rider shoves its hands to the empty hole where its face should be, turning and fleeing with a wail, launching itself into the air and disappearing into the dark.

 

“Steve!” Tony throws the torch, and he catches it with his left hand, his right bringing the greatsword up to bear one-handed and blocking blows from both Nazgul. A swipe to his left and another one is on fire and takes flight, screeching. He brings the sword up and around, disarming the last and shoving the torch straight into its empty hood.

 

As it goes, Tony can’t help but clap a little, grinning. “You know, Sam’s got a point about ultimate fighting.”

 

Steve snorts, lowering the sword and catching his breath. “I guess this would be the swords and sorcery edition.”

 

Tony laughs. Bilbo straightens, brushing off his hands. “Well fought,” he says. “Very well fought. But perhaps we should move- as Glorfindel said, the torchlight-”

 

Behind him, the first Nazgul that Steve had kicked off the edge of the ruin swoops back up and pulls a long, rusted dagger. Steve hefts the torch and throws, and it hits its mark, but not before the blade plunges into Bilbo from behind. He chokes, falling to his knees, and Tony dives for him as Steve swings his sword like a baseball bat, knocking the burning Nazgul from the edge once again.

 

“Bilbo,” Tony says sharply, tearing open his shirt. The blade had gone through, but when she goes to touch it, the metal collapses into ash. It’s probably still solid inside of him, though, and she forces herself not to hold her breath as she checks the wound. “Stay awake,” she barks. Bilbo’s eyes snap open again, but they already look clouded over.

 

“Morgul blade?” Steve asks, his voice strained as he drops to his knees next to them.

 

“Undoubtedly. He shouldn’t be moved, but we can’t stay here.” She looks up at him, grimacing.

 

“No choice.”

 

“I know.”

 

She holds him still as best she can while Steve slides his arms beneath his shoulders and his knees and lifts. Bilbo makes a terrible groaning noise deep in his throat, and Tony swears. Steve makes for the stairs and Tony follows on his heels, skittering to a stop when she hears a soft metallic thud.

 

There in the dirt, lit by the torch, is a small golden band. “Shit,” she whispers.


	8. Flight to the Ford

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Heroes discover that the timeline isn't the only thing that's changed in Middle Earth.

They have no idea where they're going once they leave Weathertop, so it's lucky that Glorfindel comes upon them. It shouldn't have been too hard; the commotion they caused would have been visible for miles, and Tony's still carrying the torch, choosing to keep the fire as a deterrent and hoping that the Nazgul are too injured to try again tonight.

 

Glorfindel slips out of the shadows, not unlike a wraith himself, and Tony’s in front of Steve and Bilbo with the torch before she has a chance to realize who it is. She lowers the torch. “Pretty quiet for a guy with bright blond hair who glows.” And sure enough, he does; he emits his own little bit of light. Not a lot, but enough that it’s noticeable.

 

“What happened?” he asks, all business as he steps closer to Bilbo, held easily in Steve’s arms.

 

“Stabbed,” Steve says in a low voice. “One of them came up behind him. We didn’t notice until it was too late.” His expression says he blames himself for the oversight.

 

“Nazgul are treacherous,” Glorfindel says, putting a hand to Bilbo’s forehead and taking as best a look at the wound as he can with Bilbo held as he is. “The fault doesn’t lie with you, my friend.” His focus is clearly on Bilbo, but he spares a second to put a hand on Steve’s arm. “Can you carry him?”

 

Steve nods, and Glorfindel draws his sword. “Good. We should leave this place quickly.”

 

He takes the lead and Steve follows with Bilbo. Tony brings up the rear, watching Steve’s back, his shoulders flexing as he keeps Bilbo as still as he can, running over the uneven ground. She’s very familiar with being the injured one Steve carries around, and she’s also very familiar with his tendency to blame himself whenever something goes wrong. It’s a quality they share.

 

She wants to tell him that he didn’t stab Bilbo, that he’s not omniscient. Couldn’t have known it was coming. But now’s not the time, and she stays quiet, running, the weight of the ring startlingly heavy in her pocket. It bangs against her thigh with every stride, reminding her that she should never have touched it in the first place.

 

The voice whispering in her mind sounds just like Howard.

 

They keep running for almost an hour, Glorfindel and Steve eating up the miles without any trouble. Tony slowly flags, falling farther and farther behind until Steve looks back and says something to Glorfindel, and they slow to a stop. She looks around for the statues of the three trolls, remembering where the party had stopped in the story she knows, but they’re nowhere to be seen. Only tall trees, taller and older than all but the oldest forests at home.

 

Glorfindel instructs Steve to lay Bilbo down on his cloak and then asks them to keep watch, disappearing into the brush. Tony looks over at Steve from where he rests on his knees, crouched over Bilbo and supporting his head so it’s easier for him to breathe. Every sound she hears sounds like a Nazgul about to drop down on their heads.

 

“It wasn’t your fault,” she says. “They were gone.”

 

“I know,” he says, not looking up at her.

 

“Really,” she says, frowning. “It _wasn’t_ your fault.”

 

“I believe you,” he says evenly. She doesn’t think he believes her at all, but if he doesn’t want to talk about it, she can’t make him. She learned that lesson very well, thank you very much. Taking a deep breath, she walks over and reaches into her pocket, shuddering when her fingers touch warm metal. It’s only warm because it’s been against her body so long; that’s obviously why. Nothing supernatural about it at all.

 

Yanking it out, she drops it onto the grass next to Steve’s knee like it’s burned her hand. It lands with an eerie sort of thud, as though it’s much heavier than a few ounces of gold. Steve stares down at it with wide eyes, then back up at her. “What the fuck?” he manages after a moment, and she winces. If Steve’s swearing, if Captain No Inappropriate Language is actually saying fuck, then things aren’t good. Then again, it might just be apropos for this situation.

 

She of all people is the last person who should be touching the One Ring, after all. She’s Tony Stark. Unlimited power should be kept far away from her.

 

Fighting the shame that’s bubbling up from her gut, she lifts her chin. “Bilbo dropped it, and he wasn’t with it enough to be able to pick it up. I only touched it with my glove, and only long enough to get it away from there.”

 

“I don’t think that matters,” Steve says, his voice unsteady as he stares down at the thing. “If you touched it, it could be corrupting you right now.”

 

“I know,” she says hoarsely. “I _know_. But I don’t want it. Not in the least little bit. Doesn’t that mean something?” She’s learned her lesson about wanting to carry the bigger stick. Learned it too late, and a hundred and seventy-seven souls paid the price.

 

“I don’t know,” he says helplessly, staring down at the ring and then up at her. “I don’t _know.”_ His voice sounds almost desperate, like she’s tearing something away from him, like she’s trying to kill Bucky again and he can’t stop her. But he must see something in her face because he sets Bilbo’s head down gently and stands. “Yes,” he says firmly. “It does mean something. I believe you.”

 

“About what?” she demands. “That I don’t want to go supervillain? That I’m not gonna take it and go try to take down the bad guys on my own? That there’s some small piece of decency in me, even if I’m a government flunkie now?”

 

“I don’t believe any of those things,” he says, but now his voice sounds forcibly even, like he has to fight to keep it that way, and he’s starting to get that tone he takes sometimes when he believes something so hard that it’s just facts to him, not an opinion, and she’s an idiot kindergartener he has to explain things to so that she gets it and tows the line. It’s absolutely infuriating, and it’s been bliss not hearing it since- well. Since the Accords.

 

“Sure you don’t,” she mutters. He opens his mouth, jaw clenching, but before he can spit out whatever _that_ retort would inevitably have been, Glorfindel steps back into the clearing, a bunch of plants in one hand and his sword raised in the other, looking at both of them with intense suspicion.

 

“Back away from the Ring,” he commands. His tone is startlingly similar to Fury’s, suddenly, and Tony’s struck with deja vu. Fury’s eyes, though, are normal brown eyes, not eerie gold like a falcon’s, one that’s about to slice its lunch to ribbons. She’d like to discontinue this metaphor now. “Or I’ll cut you down where you stand.”

 

Tony drops the broken sword, hands in the air, and Steve steps slowly back next to her, letting his sword and scabbard fall to the ground as well.

 

“We don’t want the Ring,” he says. All the anger’s gone from his demeanor, suddenly, replaced by the earnestness that turned him into the ultimate American hero. Nobody who looks at that face believes Steve could tell a lie. The about-face from his temper a moment before gives her whiplash. “We want to destroy it.”

 

“Melt it to bits,” she agrees, pointing to it on the ground. “I grabbed it, gloves on, when it fell out of Bilbo’s pockets. Swear on my mom’s grave, God rest her soul. Didn’t want the Nazgul to get it.”

 

Glorfindel looks back and forth between them, and he doesn’t lower the sword, but he doesn’t look like he’s about to stab them immediately, either. “You know a great deal about an ancient relic lost centuries before you were born.”

 

“Stories,” Steve says quietly. “Tales and stories.”

 

“Tales and stories were enough to let you recognize such a great evil?” Glorfindel counters, suspicion rising again.

 

“Enough to recognize the Witch-King of Angmar.” It’s a gambit, because Steve sure as hell didn’t know for sure if one of those Nazgul was the Witch-King. But it pays off when Glorfindel sighs, slowly lowering the sword.

 

“You fought them off,” he admits. His eyes tick to Tony. “And you laid down the Ring. That took great strength of will. I will allow you to remain for now, but know that if you so much as breathe in its direction, I shall make sure you never breathe again.” He doesn’t clarify what he means by ‘remain,’ but Tony decides not to question it. Remain with him and Bilbo, remain breathing, she’s good with either of those.

 

“Square deal,” she agrees, and Steve nods.

 

“Understood.”

 

Tony looks down at the elf’s other hand. “Can we help with the plants?”

 

As it turns out, the elf has it covered. As Tony had assumed, the plants are kingsfoil, or _athelas_ , he informs them. He would boil them and make a tea, but they don’t have the time to build a large enough fire, or to let the water heat. Instead he chews the leaves and little white flowers up into pellets and then, in horribly unsanitary fashion, sticks them into Bilbo’s wound, both in the front and the back. She feels slightly ill, watching, and not just because of the wound, which already smells like it’s beginning to grow infected, the skin around it threaded with black veins.

 

Maybe elf spit has healing powers. For Bilbo’s sake, she hopes so, because she remembers how that feels, the palladium poisoning her blood. This looks like it works a lot faster.

 

They don’t stay for long before Glorfindel binds the wounds to keep them as still as he can, and then they’re moving again, the ring wrapped snugly in a handkerchief and tucked into Bilbo’s pocket, which is buttoned tightly shut. After half a mile, Tony doesn’t have the energy to think about anything but running, Bilbo’s curls bouncing over Steve’s shoulder ahead of her.

 

The horse comes upon them suddenly to the right. If it were light out, she might be able to say which cardinal direction it came from, but in these trees, actually, maybe not. “Glorfindel!” the rider calls, the horse galloping into view and slowing to a halt. Its rider dismounts before it stops, landing lightly on his feet, and lowers his hood.

 

Or, as becomes clear a moment later, _her_ hood.

 

It’s a young woman, dressed in brown and green. She has dark brown skin and a cloud of curly black hair, tied back from her face by braids along the side of her head. She looks like she’s in her early twenties, maybe, and it’s clear that she’s human; the tips of her ears are definitely rounded, not pointed. “You found him,” she says, visibly relieved. Glorfindel, who had drawn his sword as the hoofbeats had neared, sheathes it again.

 

“Estel,” he says, and Tony only knows that’s not a greeting thanks to Tolkien. In fact, she knows exactly who that name pertains to, and she does her best to hide her double-take, glancing at Steve, who meets her eyes and raises his brows. 

 

If this whole adventure is real, and this place is a real universe that exists somewhere in the multiverse, then if Tolkien got his inspiration somehow from this place, he took some creative license.

 

Glorfindel is rapidly summarizing what’s happened and directing Steve to carry Bilbo over to the horse. Tony trails after them, feeling a bit unmoored. But when the young woman Estel goes to climb into the saddle behind Bilbo, Glorfindel stops her, one hand on the horse's shoulder. "No," he says. "Not yet, Estel."

 

"I'm smaller and lighter," she argues. "And the fastest rider."

 

"Perhaps," Glorfindel says drily, not looking terribly convinced of that. "But can you stand alone against the Nine? Can you protect Bilbo? This isn't raiders or an orc party hunting us." He puts a hand on her shoulder and squeezes gently. "One day it will be you, but not this day. Not yet. Guide Captain Rogers and Miss Stark to Imladris. I will send horses for you."

 

Looking as though she’d like to argue, Estel nods and backs away from the horse, and Glorfindel hops lightly up into the saddle, one arm around Bilbo's middle to keep him secure. "Be on your guard," he warns them.

 

"And you," Estel says, stepping back away from the horse. Glorfindel's face suddenly bursts into a grin, hard and savage, and it's both terrifying and reassuring. He nods to them, raising his free hand, and then murmurs to his horse. " _Noro lim, Asfaloth_." The horse takes off like a racehorse from the gate, and Tony watches them disappear with wide eyes, surprised to see them moving so fast on the uneven ground.

 

Elven horses, she supposes. Maybe they move as easily as the elves themselves. Glorfindel had certainly managed to avoid nearly all of the muck in the marshes, while his three companions had stepped in every bit of it. A small voice in the back of her head screams at them to come back, wants to run after them with clawed fingers and grab at the bauble in Bilbo's pocket, but she stomps on that little voice until it goes quiet.

"Asfaloth is the fastest horse in Rivendell," Estel says, thankfully drawing her from her thoughts. "He'll only let Glorfindel ride him. And me, once or twice," she adds proudly, and Tony almost revises her estimate of the younger woman’s age. But then Estel’s expression sobers again. "If any horse can outrun the Nazgul, it's Asfaloth."

 

She stares off in the direction Glorfindel had ridden, but there’s nothing to be seen but trees. "Better get moving," Tony says, snapping Estel out of her thoughts, and she turns to look at Tony and Steve, a bit awkward now that it’s just the three of them left alone, complete strangers beyond Tony recognizing her name.

 

"My apologies," Estel says. She bows her head politely, pulling youthful eagerness into well-trained politeness with apparent ease. "I am Estel, ward of Lord Elrond of Rivendell. And you must be- I'm sorry, I've forgotten your names."

 

"Steve," Steve says, holding out his hand. She looks a little confused, but reaches out and clasps his wrist, and he returns the gesture with a polite nod of his own. "This is Tony. No titles needed."

 

He gestures for them to start walking, letting Tony go ahead of him and set the pace instead of trying to keep up with his, for which she's grateful. She's not sure how long she could make it at his speed at the moment. Usually when she has to go at his pace, she’s in the armor, and she can just fly alongside or above him. Or, better yet, carry him.

 

God, flying. She misses flying. Why do they have to walk everywhere? Why can’t the damned eagles just start some kind of a business ferrying folk around Middle Earth? Talk about a great opportunity missed. Walking is terrible.

 

Steve, of course, is probably unbothered. After all, in his day they had to walk to school, uphill both ways and barefoot in the snow.

 

"Glorfindel said you fought the Nine," Estel says from behind her, interrupting her thoughts. Probably for the best, or she’d start whining out loud pretty soon.

 

Steve clears his throat, and his response is quiet. "Well, only five of them were coming at us. And Bilbo did get hurt, which shouldn’t have happened."

 

"Even so." Tony detects a bit of hero worship in the young woman’s tone, and glances back at them over her shoulder, arching a brow. "That's amazing. You must be a great swordsman."

 

Steve clears his throat again, awkward as he always is with this kind of thing. He glances at Tony, looking helpless, but she makes no move to help him. At least this time there aren't any trading cards involved, and no one's asking him to sign their, ah, assets. Tony swears they do it just to see him blush.

 

She can hardly blame them; she says ridiculous things on a regular basis solely for the purpose of getting Steve to blush. It’s a wonderful thing, really.

 

"Maybe we could spar?" the other young woman suggests. "In Rivendell. You could fight Glorfindel." No small amount of hero worship there, either.

 

Steve progresses from throat-clearing to coughing. Tony wonders how he thinks he's going to get across to anyone that he's never touched a sword before in his life, that she knows of, and certainly never had any formal training. Fake it til he makes it, perhaps. "I- ah. Maybe. That might be fun."

 

"Maybe Glorfindel would give us both a lesson," she suggests over her shoulder, biting back her smile. "If he has time. I'm sure he's a busy guy."

 

"He’s the Lord Seneschal," Estel says, scanning the trees around them. "But he does instruct the more advanced guards, and he spars with the sons of Elrond. I’m sure he’d make the time for a guest.”

 

"I’ll look into it," Steve says, clearly attempting to end that line of conversation. Estel falls silent after that, her eyes constantly watching their surroundings, and their walk is quiet and watchful, all three of them waiting for riders in black to charge through the trees.


	9. The Hidden Valley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Heroes reach the Last Homely House.

The riders never appear, but that only makes the tension worse.

 

It takes them eight days to reach the Fords of the Bruinen, a quiet, worried eight days during which the two Avengers come to know their new friend a bit better. Estel tells them about her youth in Rivendell, about her foster father and his sons (although she notably never refers to them as brothers, which makes sense considering her youth and their comparative ages), and about her hopes to become a ranger in the Wilds, and to fight with the Dunedain.

 

In turn, Steve and Tony both share a little more about their past, but they have to be pretty creative with how they talk about New York, about their friends- calling themselves travelling mercenaries is easier than claiming to hail from a city that doesn’t exist in this world, but the term mercenary gets a bit under their skin.

 

A rider finds them on the road on the fifth day, all of them worried for Glorfindel and Bilbo but unwilling to voice it. It feels like bad luck. The rider is a pale, dark-haired elf woman with a wickedly curved bow who introduces herself as Idhwe, and she’s brought with her a horse for each of them. They’ll make much better time from this point on. Tony’s just glad not to be walking for a while (although her seat bones will probably be feeling the strain of a long day on horseback by nightfall).

 

Idhwe greets Estel familiarly, and gives them all a much-needed debrief. She says that Glorfindel and Bilbo reached the Fords on the fourth day since they departed on Asfaloth. They rode through the night to make the journey, elf, hobbit and horse far past exhaustion, having rested only briefly, and only when they must. Asfaloth had been close to collapse, but they’d crossed the waters before the Nazgul could catch them, and Lord Elrond had called the river to rise and flood the Fords of the Bruinen, washing the Nazgul downriver in a torrent no man should be able to survive.

 

A fresh horse had carried Glorfindel and Bilbo into Rivendell, and Glorfindel had sent the rider out after them, and his sons to investigate the fate of the black riders. Even knowing they made it safely, Tony’s stomach is still in knots as they ride, enough that she barely gets excited to cross the Last Bridge and venture through the Trollshaws. Idhwe is a quiet guide, much as Glorfindel had been, and just as watchful as Estel. The time seems to pass faster now that they can move more quickly, but their worries have only lessened slightly, for Idhwe hadn’t been able to report much on Bilbo’s condition.

 

The party reaches the Bruinen when the sun is high in the sky on the eighth day. A rider on horseback waits on the opposite shore, and their escort rides ahead to meet them, bowing her head and exchanging a few quiet words in the elven tongue. She turns and raises a hand to the three of them. “Farewell,” she calls, riding off downriver. The rider waits for them to join him before pushing his hood back and bowing politely, one hand over his heart. He’s tall and broad-shouldered, with long brown hair and pale skin tanned a bit from the sun. As they approach, Tony can see that he has peculiar silver eyes that glint like Glorfindel’s, though more like starlight than sunlight in this case. Estel grins and urges her horse forward, riding ahead of Steve to greet the newcomer. “Mae govannen, Elladan.”

 

“I am glad to see you, gwathel nin,” the elf says, smiling. To Tony and Steve, he says in the tongue they’ve decided must be Westron, “Well met. I am Elladan, son of Elrond, Lord of Rivendell. Glorfindel will be glad to hear you’ve arrived safely.”

 

“They made it to a healer?” Steve asks. Elladan nods, and Tony can feel the tension draining out of her shoulders. Next to her, she can hear Steve let out a long breath. “Idhwe didn’t know how Bilbo fared.”

 

“Aye, they reached my father’s house safely,” Elladan confirms, urging his horse to turn and start walking up the steep path. It’s rocky, and all four of the horses pick their way carefully up the slope, Tony following Elladan and Steve behind her, Estel bringing up the rear. The woods feel oddly less oppressive on this side of the river, and the sun shines brightly through the trees, welcoming visitors down into the valley. They ride for an hour and never pass an actual gate, but as Elladan informs them, playing tour guide, his father can raise the river waters, and none has ever made it past that barrier.

 

They cross between two high, steep stone faces, the path barely wide enough for a wagon, and Tony feels vaguely like she’s stepping onto the set of the movie _300_ , albeit with more greenery. “It’s like Thermopylae,” Steve mutters behind her, and she grins.

 

“This is Sparta,” she quips in kind, and he snorts. Elladan shoots them an odd look over his shoulder, but neither explains, so he just arches a brow in their direction and carries on. Tony assumes, looking around, that there must be plenty of guards, but she doesn’t see a single one.

 

Natasha and Barton would be impressed. Hell, looking at the bows the elves carry, Barton would be over the moon. Tony decides that whenever they- whenever they get home, or wake up, or whatever happens, she’s going to make him one like these. They’re functional works of art, polished wood inlaid with steel and bronze. Her hands are itching to pick one up and take a closer look at it.

 

The cold wind that had been making the long ride miserable for days abruptly disappears, although it still whistles loudly through the passage above them.

 

They emerge into an overlook where, through the tops of the pine trees, the entire valley is visible. The Last Homely House is the largest structure by far, its delicate roofs and turrets reaching high above the rest of the buildings, but there are many others, the largest surrounding the House and the rest scattered throughout the valley. Everything looks small from this height, and Elladan gives them a moment to take in the view, pointing out a few things- the stables, his father's House, the forges with their ever-present column of smoke from the fires- before leading them down the path.

 

It's deceptively steep-looking, but a wagon could make it without too much difficulty, and the horses have no trouble. It does, however, have a sheer drop to one side and a flat cliff face to the other, and they stick to riding single-file even though two horses could make it without trouble. Even Tony, who is more than used to and in fact enjoys heights, keeps well away from the edge. There's no armor here to save her from going splat. 

 

Once they make it down the ledge along the cliff to a (to Tony's mind) more reasonable elevation, there is naturally a very narrow bridge over a fast-moving river. "You know," Tony says, halting her mount before it can step onto the crossing, "there's a point where architecture becomes unreasonable."

 

Elladan stops and looks back, one brow raised. The expression would be more dry if he wasn't visibly withholding a smile. "No interlopers have ever made it this far into Imladris," he says. "But in the event that they did, it would be easy to topple them from here, would it not?"

 

"It'd be easy for us to topple from here," Tony counters.

 

His smile breaks free a bit further. "Your horse will not fall. He's crossed this bridge many times in his life, and while moving much faster to boot. You would be safe in the crossing even if you closed your eyes."

 

Tony stares at him. "Why don't we save that for next time?"

 

Steve sighs a little from behind her. "Next time implies that there has to be a first time for it to happen," he says. He's being kind, and Tony wants to kick him for it.

 

She doesn’t think she’s being unreasonable at all. She’s perfectly comfortable trusting her tech to break the sound barrier at thirty thousand feet, but this is putting her trust in a creature with a mind of its own and very well-evolved fight or flight instincts, with the balance weighted heavily in favor of flight. She’s ridden horses before, and they can lose their minds and take off running at the drop of a hat. But she’s also not going to wimp out in front of these people, she is fucking _Iron Woman_ , she can walk a horse across a bridge. So… walking. Now. Yep.

 

With an exaggerated sigh, she loosens the reins, and tangles her fingers in the gelding's mane. "Go for it," she says, and with a slight head jerk to tug the reins a bit looser still, he walks across, to all appearances entirely bored by the stiff, wary human on his back.

 

"Railings," she says to Elladan as his hooves touch solid ground again, letting out a huge breath. "There is nothing architecturally offensive about railings."

 

"I shall ask my father to take that under advisement," he says seriously. If he wasn't their host, she'd reach out and smack him. She refrains, though, just relieved to see Steve and Estel both also on firm ground again, and then Elladan turns his horse, trotting off into the woods. Their own mounts follow after, and they emerge into a secluded-looking courtyard. The Last Homely House doesn't look quite like it did in the movies, although Tony can see the similarities in the color palettes and the Seussical lack of straight lines in the design. Everything seems curved, pointed or spiraled, nothing straight and even except for the steps and the courtyard's flagstones.

 

Also, there are outer walls. Elves here must actually feel the cold to some extent, unlike Jackson's interpretation. Or at the very least they don't want the wind gusting in on them and disturbing all their stuff every ten seconds.

 

A dark-haired elf who bears a strong resemblance to Elladan emerges through a tall, arched doorway. His clothes and the circlet on his brow are all varying shades of silver, and they echo the same glimmering silver eyes. "Welcome home, my son," he says, gliding down the steps to them. "Glorfindel and Bilbo brought unpleasant tidings."

 

"Is Bilbo all right?" Estel asks, swinging down from his horse. The tall elf nods, and Tony hears Steve echo her relieved sigh.

 

"His wound has been cleaned of that foul poison, and he is sleeping comfortably."

 

Three other elves appear, all of them wearing similar burgundy tunics, and their horses are taken away. They're left to stare at the tall elf for a second or two while he speaks more quietly to Elladan; Steve seems to be watching closely, but Tony can't understand what she can hear of the conversation. The tall elf looks over to them and bows politely. "Welcome to Rivendell and the Last Homely House. I am Lord Elrond, master of this House, and I offer you my hospitality. You are welcome in these halls."

 

Feeling a bit awkward, Tony bows back, Steve following suit and managing to make it looks much less awkward than she does. Damned super soldiers. "I'm Tony Stark, and this is Captain Steve Rogers."

 

Steve clears his throat, but she ignores him. With all the fancy titles, they can give his out, too. She keeps going. "We came upon Bilbo in the midst of an- well, a slight altercation with the black riders, and we stepped in to help him."

 

"He seemed like he could use a hand," Steve says, only a little bit dryly. One hobbit versus a bunch of armored guys on horses- not exactly an evenly matched fight.

 

Elrond's brows, which seem to be rather impressively arched to begin with, raise even higher. "Indeed," he says slowly. "We are all grateful for your assistance, Bilbo in particular, I suspect."

 

"Can we see him?" Estel asks, stepping forward. Elrond puts a familiar hand on the young woman's shoulder and squeezes, and Estel steps a bit further into the circle of the much taller elf's arm, some of the tension draining out of her shoulders. Tony spares a thought from Bilbo’s welfare to wonder again at how old the younger woman might be.

 

"He has not yet woken," Elrond says, looking more serious. "But I believe he soon shall. In the meantime, we will prepare for more visitors." He looks to Tony and Steve. "I would speak with you both after you've rested and eaten. Lindir will show you to the guest quarters."

 

Unsure of how else to respond, Tony decides on, "Thank you." Awkward pause. "My lord?"

 

Next to her, Steve does the annoyingly elegant bow again, but she refrains from stepping on his foot for the sake of both their dignities, even if she wouldn't mind seeing his grumpy face. It'd be a welcome bit of normalcy, to be honest. Elrond nods in response, and she supposes they were both correct enough; another pale, dark-haired elf steps up next to them with a polite smile and gestures for them to follow him.

 

"Mae govannen, honored guests," he says in a light, musical voice. There's a little gold circlet on his head, smaller than Lord Elrond's but still fancy. He must be important. "Please follow me."

 

Steve gestures for Tony to go first, and as they start off down a cobbled path, she turns to look over her shoulder, and sees Lord Elrond wrap his arm more fully around Estel, pulling her against his side. She hesitates, and then goes in for the hug, her shoulders slumping further in relief, and Elladan puts a hand on her back, too. It's a touching but undoubtedly private moment, and it's for the best that the three elves are out of sight a moment later.

 

Rivendell is, at first glance, extremely beautiful. It’s beautiful at second, third, fourth, and fifth glance, too. That makes sense- it’s hard to believe that immortal beings with quite literally all the time in the world wouldn’t try to make their living spaces as aesthetically pleasing as possible. Or, alternately, maybe they’re just very narcissistic and want to make their surroundings as beautiful as they themselves are. It could go either way, honestly, or be a bit of both. The elves are lovely, of course- she hasn’t seen a single one that couldn’t walk a catwalk during Paris Fashion Week, should they find themselves in regular old Earth’s universe- but they all seem to walk around wearing either a far off, daydreaming sort of expression or looking like something crawled under their nose and died.

 

And then there’s Lindir, who seems to be politely embarrassed by everything in the world. Well, that or he’s just trying to be polite about their BO, which is entirely possible. After a few weeks of wandering about in the wilds, neither Tony nor Steve smells like a bed of roses. It had been hard to miss the lack of deodorant in Bree, but at least they’d blended in with everything else. Here, they stick out like a pair of putrid thumbs, because elves apparently don’t sweat through their armpits. Or anywhere else, if their elven travelling companions have been an accurate sample of the elven race.

 

The architecture is an odd mix of the Secret Garden and Swiss chalets, with all of the pointy roofs and wooden walls. Lots of pastels and autumnal shades, intricate stone carvings that look like more plants or generic elves. It’s gorgeous, if a bit too full of green things for Tony’s taste. If Rhodey were here, he’d be losing his mind, and the thought makes her heart give an extra loud thump. God, if Rhodey were here. She wishes Rhodey was here. What he wouldn’t give to see this place, it would make his nerdy little heart soar…

 

They get a nice little leaf-chalet of their own, which is kind of their hosts, if a bit presumptive. Inside, though, there are in fact two bedrooms, and the little building is connected to the rest of the place by a short, covered walkway. Most of the Last Homely House seems to be a series of interconnected buildings, residential and otherwise, rather than one large structure. It’s more of a town than a house or a fortress.

 

The stone balcony on the front of their chalet looks out over a fair-sized piece of the valley, and Tony peers at the columns of gray smoke rising from what must either be the kitchens or the forges, tantalizingly close by. Lindir bows and leaves them to their own devices, and Steve comes over to tap her shoulder. “There are clean clothes inside,” he says. “And warm baths.” That gets her attention.

 

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” She turns on her heel, stepping past him and into the little house; it’s divided into two rooms, one with a table and chairs and a chaise-like sort of couch, and the other with a comfortable-looking bed. The bed’s not enormous, but it’ll be big enough that they should have no trouble keeping from touching each other in the night, and it looks long enough for Steve. Elves are as tall or taller than he is, which is a nice change from Bree.

 

“The couch looked comfortable,” she says after a moment, looking down at her fingernails, which are even filthier than they normally are after a few days in the workshop. “If you think we should sleep separately.”

 

“I mean, we don’t have to,” Steve hedges.

 

“I’m asking what you think, not what we have to do. I don’t think we have to do anything. Glorfindel obviously told them that we’re- I don’t know, a couple, whatever they call it here.” Tony sighs, reaching back to free her hair from the braid it’s been in for over a week, now. It’s a grimy, oily task, and she makes a face.

 

“Which- is not really true,” Steve says quietly, still behind her.

 

Tony breathes out sharply through her nose. "No, really? I completely didn't notice how we tried to kill each other. That's definitely not grounds for a break-up. Neither is lying to someone about knowing that your best friend was brainwashed into killing that someone's parents, I don't see how that would cause relationship trouble at all-"

 

"Can we not do this right now?"

 

Tony's temper snaps at that. She whirls around, her eyes narrowed and her mouth opened to say something she'll probably regret later. But Steve's just standing there looking exhausted and resigned, his face drawn and tired. They're both wiped out, filthy and hungry and on edge after several weeks of stress.

Whatever she'd been about to say dies on her lips as the flash of anger dissipates almost as quickly as it had appeared.

 

It leaves something cold and empty behind, and she looks down and away, suddenly sick to her stomach. "Fine," she says hoarsely, turning away from him.

 

They're not in a relationship. She might have accepted that it hadn't really been Barnes who'd killed her parents, but that doesn't negate the fact that Steve had left in pretty much the most final way possible. They'd truly, violently fought each other, and whatever reasons they'd had at the time, whether they regret it or they wish it hadn't happened, it's still there between them.

 

She'd been bent on destroying Barnes, and- she would have regretted it later, when she'd known about what had been done to him. When she realized that it hadn't been his choice to do it. She would’ve regretted it. So, she _is_ grateful to Steve for stopping her. But she can't forget how he hadn't just gotten between them, hadn't tried to stop her, he'd actually _fought_ her. He'd hit her, struck her down, and she'd thought- when he'd held the shield over her, she'd thought-

 

(He'd broken the reactor, not her neck. Broke the reactor and she can't stop confusing the image with Obie, leaning over her to take it. That's not even what's messing her up, she knows he did it to stop her, he wasn't going to kill her but she can't get the image out of her head-)

 

She threw the first punch. She knows she did. She started it, and Steve finished it. It's a fight, and it happened. But Steve withheld his suspicion that Barnes killed her parents from her. Not for days, not for months, but for over a year. He let her keep paying for his searches, used her tech, her AI, all of it, to track Barnes down. He should have _told her._ And then after everything, he walked away with Barnes. Left.

 

They both messed up. She'll freely admit that. No one's fully at fault more than anyone else in this mess, and there's not even really one thing she can point to and say 'that's why I'm still angry at you.' But the mess is all still there, and she's afraid it'll never really go away. She's more afraid, she thinks, of losing Steve, but she has no idea how to even begin talking about it without getting angry.

 

She looks around. There's a warm bath in the corner, as advertised; there even appears to be plumbing in this place, to her surprise. She's not sure where the toilet might be, but frankly, she'll keep peeing in the woods if it means hot baths are available. "You can have the bath first-" she starts to offer, but when she turns back around to look at Steve again, he's vanished.

 

"Okay then," she says. That’s that conversation finished, it seems, at least for now. 

 

She shuts the door and strips down, looking at the uncovered windows for a moment and then shrugging. Nothing Steve hasn't seen before, if he's even within sight of the chalet. The bath is hot, but not as overwhelmingly relaxing as it could have been; she can't stop replaying the brief, frustrating exchange in her mind. She washes off and drains out the dirty water, refilling it again for whenever he comes back. There are clean, borrowed clothes on the bed and she pulls them on. She makes a face at the garments obviously intended for her- a dress and some kind of bastardization of a robe and a cloak, and little leather shoes. The clothes are made from some soft, pretty material- not quite silk, nothing she recognizes, but comfortable and warm.

 

The gown might have been easier with Steve's help- it laces up along her side, and it's not particularly easy to manage on her own, but she gets it laced snugly enough that she's decent. Important things, she supposes.

 

She's not sure what to do once she's cleaned up and dressed. The elves had left them some fruit and cheese, and she sits on the chaise and eats a few grapes, but despite how hungry she'd been earlier, she finds she's lost her appetite. In the end she's never been very good at sitting still without something to keep her mind occupied, and sitting there dwelling on the argument and waiting for Steve to return to hash it out again is an unappealing plan. With few other options at the moment, she decides some exploring is in order. She assumes it's allowed; Lindir hadn't said anything about their staying in the chalet, and they're not prisoners.

 

Her eyes tick to the floor next to the door, where her pack and the broken sword are lying, both pieces of the blade still in its cracked scabbard.

 

The borrowed clothes are fine enough that she almost feels guilty for heading in the direction of the pillars of smoke she'd spied from the balcony. It's not as though she can just buy replacements for anything she accidentally burns or otherwise destroys; she's not exactly a billionaire here.

 

While she walks, though, she's not paying as much attention to her surroundings as she otherwise might. She can't help thinking about how out of character it was for Steve to leave, and how much of that was her fault. What kind of person can drive Captain America to walk away from a fight, something she's pretty sure he's never done in his life? Even walking away from a fight that neither of them actually wants to have, that's still... painful. Guilt-inducing. All sorts of bad things.

 

Maybe he'd done the right thing. Maybe he'd done what she couldn't, walking away and saving them from themselves, the way he'd gotten Bucky away from her in Siberia. She can't walk away from this, can't leave it alone. Can't stop going through it in her mind, over and over again. Maybe walking away is the braver thing.

 

Maybe that's true for more than just this argument. It's a painful thought.

 

Her borrowed gown is a bit long, and she has to hold the skirts up in one hand to keep them from dragging in the leaves that cover the ground. She ties her hair back in a knot when the wind starts to blow it across her face (she'll regret putting it up later on, probably when she's in bed and it's still wet enough to make her pillow uncomfortable, but that's a problem for Future Tony), and wanders along the curving, spiraling paths, a bit afraid of taking a shortcut across the grass. She's fairly sure the elves will somehow just know.

 

Whoever laid this place out was apparently thinking far more about artistic landscaping than efficiency; anyone in a hurry is getting nowhere fast. The walkways, paved with flat stones worn smooth and soft, are completely lacking in signage, and Tony's navigating solely through guesswork.

 

Well, that and she's following her nose a bit.  After a few minutes of wandering, she catches the familiar scent of hot metal and things on fire. It's somewhere nearby, close enough that her baseline human olfactory senses can identify it, and she follows the smell of her favorite things like Thor towards an Orange Crush pop tart (which are the weirdest thing, but he buys cases of them). As she gets closer, the sounds of clanging hammers are impossible to miss.


	10. Many Meetings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which elves are remarkable (and remarkably tolerant) hosts.

The smithies are set in a long, open structure, a line of elven smiths working around a number of hot forges. Tony steps closer, aware that she’s not best-dressed for this sort of endeavor, but she doesn’t get closer than ten yards or so before she’s stopped by a tall, dark-skinned elf. Very, very tall; he’s got more than a foot on her, at least. Taller than Thor or Volstagg or anyone she knows, for sure. His head is shaved smooth and clean, and it highlights the long points of his ears. He folds his arms, peering down at her.

 

“Hi,” she says, trying for her press conference smile and partially succeeding. “Tony. I was wondering if you might have a forge and some tools I could borrow briefly. I seem to have had an unfortunate incident on the road- old blade, poorly maintained, locked in a crypt for an unknown number of centuries, that sort of thing.”

 

The tall elf blinks down at her. “That blade was locked in a crypt?” His eyes tick further down to stare at the sword hilt. “That blade was made by the smiths of Westernesse. Do you mean to say that you [i]robbed their graves[/i]- ”

 

“No!” Tony says quickly. “No, actually, there were dead skeletons walking, a wraith, my friends and I almost died- it was a whole mess, and we managed- obviously, since I’m not dead- and then Tom Bombadil gave us the weapons-”

 

“Tom Bombadil,” the elf interrupts, his tone on the dry side of dubious.

 

“Guy wears a pointy hat and has a thing for skipping?”

 

“I know who he is.”

 

“Okay. Right, yes. We arrived a few hours ago. Bilbo and Glorfindel showed up a few days ago-”

 

“Lord Glorfindel.”

 

“Yes. Lord, yes. He’s a lord. I forgot. Lord Glorfindel.”

 

The elf is staring at her now. Finally, he just shakes his head, his eyes startlingly white against flawless, almost blue-black skin. “These forges are manned by the greatest Firstborn smiths yet in Middle Earth, not the Secondborn. And particularly not by insolent human women who wouldn’t know one end of a hammer from the other.”

 

Tony raises her brows and looks him up and down, lifting her chin. “How about letting me try? If I make a fool out of myself, you’ve proved you’re right.”

 

“I have no need of proof. I know I am right.”

 

He stares down at her for a long moment, expressionless, and then turns on his heel and walks away.

 

Tony watches him go, then lifts the scabbard, pulling out the blade. It comes free easily enough, the broken tip jagged and glinting in the sunlight. “Mr. Bombadil told me this blade was made by the Numenoreans. Or their descendants. I’m not sure which, but it saved my life against a barrow wight.” The elf stops, turning to look back at her, and the other smiths within earshot have stopped, are watching her too. “And it saved the lives of my friend Bilbo and of the man I love.” Not thinking about Steve. Not thinking about the aborted conversation earlier. Nope. “I don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t been there. And then it broke when we faced the Nazgul. So I feel like I owe it to the blade to fix it. It’s what I do- I fix things. I make things. Armor, weapons, and things people find useful, things that help them and make their lives easier.”

 

She swallows, smiles thinly. “I’m rude, I have zero tact, and I’m definitely an asshole. But I’d be in your debt if you’d let me fix this sword.”

 

The elf stares at her for a long, long moment. The other smiths seem about as confused as he looks, but he’s obviously the man in charge, and it’s his call whether to let Tony work here. Finally, he huffs out a sigh and points to an empty workbench. “If your skills do not meet with my approval, you must leave.”

 

Tony lets out a breath. “Absolutely. Completely fair.” Her hands are itching to pick up some tools. But the elf folds his arms over his leather apron, and walks over to her again, looking down his long nose at her.

 

“You must borrow other clothes. These are unsafe around a forge. There are spares in the shed.” He points, and Tony salutes, resheathing the broken blade and heading in that direction. When she emerges, she finds the blade and scabbard plucked from her hands; she jumps, and barely refrains from punching whoever it is; the elf smith arches a brow when she spins to face him.

 

“You will not begin with this. I will test your skill before you may touch something so fine as this.” He points to a bucket of scrap iron. “First you will make nails.”

 

“Nails?” Tony echoes. The elf nods, a smile playing around his lips for the first time.

 

“Nails.”

 

Several hours have gone by before Tony returns to the little guest house to find Steve inside, standing by the little table and looking at a map by candlelight. He looks up and sees her come in in her borrowed breeches and tunic, which are all covered with a thick layer of soot, and frowns.

 

She hesitates, looking at his blue tunic, then up at his eyes. “I… forgot.”

 

“Mmhmm.”

 

“Lord Elrond wanted to see us.” Which she’d promptly forgotten twenty minutes after arriving. She refrains from smacking herself in the forehead, but only just; she’d missed dinner and the moon is high in the sky, but Alben the smith hadn’t commented, had just shooed her off in the direction she’d come. She’d made more nails than she could count before he’d let her start on repairing a broken dagger, and it had been fascinating. He’d seemed impressed, too, for all that he hadn’t seemed to be one for showing much expression.

 

“I explained where you’d gone, and about your habit of getting lost in your work.” Steve straightens from where he’d been leaning against the table and sets down the stick of charcoal he’d been using to mark the map. “You reemerged sooner than I expected, actually.”

 

“They sent me to bed,” she says with a small smile. “Or it could have been days. I thought I knew what I was doing, making Rhodey’s LARPing gear back in the day, but I had no idea. The craftsmanship they do here is amazing.”

 

“I’m glad you’re learning.”

 

She hovers next to the table, not wanting to sit and get things dirty. The bathtub’s drained, and he’d clearly come back to wash. “Steve, about earlier-“

 

“It’s fine.”

 

She frowns, but he doesn’t look at her. “It’s not fine. I shouldn’t have said all of that. I don’t- I forgave Barnes. He’s living in my fucking home with me. And I forgave _you_.” She realizes as she says it that it’s not a lie. She’s- she’s upset, she’s angry, there’s so much unsaid between then that they haven’t discussed, but as much as she wants to have it out, to finally get it all out in the open and air everything that’s created the gulf between them, she realizes that she wants to fix it. That she _has_ forgiven Steve.

 

“It’s not that simple.” Steve takes a deep breath. “We don’t have to talk about it, Tony.”

 

She folds her arms, turns to face him even if he’s still looking down at the map, facing the table and not her. “I think we do. Who would’ve thought it, me being the one to insist on a conversation and you avoiding it like the plague, but here we are.”

 

He sighs. “I’m not avoiding it like the plague. There are other things we need to discuss right now.”

 

“That’s true, but we keep putting it off. We’ve had all this time for weeks now, while we were on the road getting here, and we never once brought it up.”

 

“In front of Bilbo and Glorfindel, and then Estel, right.” Steve drags a hand through his hair, puts his other hand on his hip. “That would have gone great.”

 

“Fine.” Tony takes a deep breath, lets it out. “We’re here now. And you talked to Lord Elrond- catch me up on that, and then maybe we can just sit down and talk?”

 

He turns to look at her now, and lets his hands fall to his sides. “Okay. Fine, okay.” He moves to the chaise and sinks down onto it, rubbing his temple. “Lord Elrond believed me. Or I think he did. He didn’t say, but I got the impression the elven rings are real here, too.”

 

“Three elven rings under the sky,” Tony says, moving over to stand across from him. She’s more tired than she realized, though, and she looks down at her borrowed clothes. “I need to change again. Just a sec.”

  

  


 

There’s a shift folded on the bed for her, and soft sleep pants for Steve. She strips off the soiled garments and pulls on the shift, made of that same soft, silk-like material. She wipes at the soot on her skin with a cloth folded next to the ewer of water in the bedroom as Steve appears in the doorway. He watches her wash, leaning on the doorframe, which is carved in a pattern to make it look like tree bark. “He has no idea how to send us back. The idea of an alternate dimension didn’t seem to throw him as much as I was afraid it would, but he didn’t have any solutions.”

 

She scrubs at the back of her neck, but the soot’s pretty stubborn. “And he’s got bigger concerns than just the two of us, right now.”

 

“Yeah.” She looks over to see Steve looking closely at her. “So it becomes what we want to do. You touched the Ring. We’re here, with no clear way of getting back, at least not yet. Elrond said he’ll look into it, see what he and his people can find.”

 

“But.” Their eyes meet, and she tilts her head. “But what if they need us? Do we leave, knowing what’s probably going to happen?”

 

“Probably going to happen, but maybe not in the way we’re familiar with.”

 

“True.”

 

“So that’s the question. Can we walk away?” Steve comes in and sits on the edge of the bed behind her.

 

“Are we accepting it as real, now? I’m asking what you think.” She scrubs harder, moving down over her collarbone; anywhere where her skin was exposed is smudged to some extent.

 

Steve’s silent for a moment before he responds. “I think too much is different for it to be entirely a figment of our imaginations.” Tony lowers the cloth and turns to look at him. He meets her eyes evenly. “And I don’t think I can walk away. We have some idea of what’s coming, even if it’s different. We can help.”

 

“Okay,” Tony says, scrubbing at her collarbone again. She gets a little close to the reactor scars over her sternum, and she winces at the lingering tenderness. “Devil’s advocate, though. What if we make it worse?” Giving up on washing, she sets down the cloth and turns to look at him, feeling uncomfortably aware of the fact that she’s not wearing anything under the shift. “What if our presence here changes things? What if the Ring isn’t destroyed if we try to help? If our being here causes something that prevents it?”

 

He nods, but he doesn’t look away, keeps his eyes on hers. “But what if we don’t help, and then they fail? What if we leave, and Sauron wins?” He stands up, reaches over for the cloth, and holds it up tentatively. “You missed part of your back.” She nods, turns, feels the cloth running over the back of her shoulders above the shift. “Can we really walk away from this without trying to help?”

 

Tony forces herself to think about the conversation, and not about the confusion in the pit of her stomach. Steve won’t talk about what happened, but he’s comfortable helping her wash, and it makes no sense. But she doesn’t want to chase him away, so she swallows the words that want to bubble up and out. “I guess that’s the real question we have to answer,” she agrees quietly.

 

“Yeah,” he says in kind. He sets the cloth back down, and she turns to face him, the night air cold on her damp skin. The warmth from the fire in the other room doesn’t quite reach into this room, even with the small brazier in the corner, lit with hot coals, and she can feel her nipples tightening against the soft fabric. She fights not to cross her arms over her chest, because it’s hardly the first time Steve’s seen her in even fewer clothes than this. Steve’s still standing less than a foot away, and she swallows hard, opening her mouth to say something. He beats her to it. “Did you mean it?”

 

She shuts her mouth yet again on what she was about to say. “Did I mean what?” she asks instead.

 

His expression is unreadable in the dim light- he can probably see her much better than she can see him, damned super soldier senses- and he’s looking at her with dark eyes. She forces her arms to stay by her side again, and not to cross them over her chest. “That you forgave me.”

 

She looks down and away, but then forces her eyes back up to his. “I mean it. I forgive you. It was both of our faults. We both messed up.” She clears her throat. “I just want things to be back to normal. I don’t want to be angry anymore, Steve.”

 

He presses his lips together in a grimace. “Not wanting to be angry anymore isn’t the same as forgiving someone, Tony.”

 

“That’s true, but I have.” Now she gives into the urge to cross her arms. “And being the one who’s here in my head, I think I’d be the one to know if I forgive you or not.”

 

He takes a half step back and nearly runs into the bed again. “And what if I don’t think you should?”

 

“I’d think you don’t have any right to dictate how I feel.”

 

“That’s not what I meant.”

 

“Okay.” A pause. “Do you forgive me?”

 

“I was never angry with you, Tony.”

 

“I tried to kill Barnes! We literally went to war with each other over the Accords. Of course you were angry!”

 

“But never at you!”

 

“Bullshit.”

 

“I’m angry with you every other day, Tony. If it hadn’t been for the whole clusterfuck with Bucky, we never would have fought that way-”

 

When he swears, it makes Tony pause, and she takes a half-step back in surprise. The movement makes Steve flinch, and her brow furrows. The gesture was just surprise, but he backs further away from her, and she frowns. “Maybe, but we did, Steve. We have to accept that things happened the way they did.”

 

“What happened in Siberia wouldn’t have happened if I’d been honest with you.”

 

“I know that. And maybe the whole argument about the Accords wouldn’t have happened if I’d been honest with you and the rest of the team about Ross coming down on us. If I’d filled you all in before he showed up.” She waves in the direction of the door, the gesture encompassing everything that had happened. “That was on me, and I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you. The blame isn’t on one person, Steve. Don’t do that.”

 

He turns away. “You were emotionally compromised by what happened in Sokovia. It wasn’t your fault.”

 

“Maybe not. And maybe it was. But you were emotionally compromised, too, and I stopped paying attention to that. I should have been supporting you after Peggy’s death, but I was distracted. That was my fault.” She lets her arms fall down to her sides again, takes a step closer to him. His back is tense enough that she can see the outline of nearly every muscle even through the looser tunic. “We can stand here excusing each other’s behavior all we want, but I think we need to accept that it happened. What’s happening that’s keeping you from doing that?” She rubs the back of her neck. “And I’d like you to know how weird it feels to be the one in touch with my emotions right now. It feels like we’re pod people. I don’t like this.”

 

He chokes on a laugh, but he doesn’t otherwise respond. After a moment, she can’t keep from reaching out, puts a hand on his shoulder. He tenses even further, but doesn’t flinch away. “Steve,” she says quietly. “Please.”

 

“It’s nothing you did,” he finally says, his voice hoarse and uneven. She’s only ever seen him cry one time, and she doesn’t think he’s doing it now, but he sounds like he’s close to it. “I just need to deal with it.”

 

“You need to _tell me_.”

 

“I will.” He clears his throat, runs a hand over his face, and then he turns back to face her. Her hand drops from his shoulder. “Just… not tonight. I need some time.” His eyes are red, but she was right. He’s not crying. His expression looks a lot like it had when they’d first met, though, back when he’d first come out of the ice, and he hadn’t shown much expression at all.

 

“Okay,” she says quietly. She turns towards the door. “Okay. We should sleep, or something.”

 

“All right.” His voice is even quieter than hers, and she turns to look back before she leaves. He sits back down on the bed, and he’s not watching her go, is just staring at the wall, his face closed off and empty.

 

She’s about to offer to take the couch, since she’s the shorter of the two of them and it looks comfortable enough, but she hesitates. “We can stay in here. Both of us. No sense in one of us hurting their back when the bed sleeps two.” And Steve will probably even fit in it; most of the elves are at least as tall as he is, if not taller.

 

He looks up at that, and she smiles faintly. He blinks at her, surprised, but after a long minute, he nods. She slips back out into the main room to extinguish the candles while he changes, startled as she does so by how natural the chore feels, even after only a few weeks without electricity. Amazing how little she’s noticed its absence.

 

When she comes back in, Steve’s changed, but he’s waiting for her before he climbs into the bed. She gets in under the covers first, rolling her eyes a little because he wants to be the one closer to the door- she doesn’t even need to ask. She moves over against the wall, and he follows her in, tugging the covers up to their chins. She promptly tucks her feet up against his shins, and he jumps, muttering under his breath.

 

“Well, warm them up and they won’t be like ice cubes,” she says haughtily, managing to stick her nose in the air even while lying on a pillow.

 

He just snorts and rolls onto his side to face away from her, muttering, “I’ll show you ice cubes.”

 

She rolls her eyes again (she’s going to strain something, soon) but refrains from making any retorts about Capsicles, and closes her eyes instead.  The bed is clearly meant for two, but it’s small enough that their backs are up against each other, and she makes no move to remove her feet from his calves.

 

Despite her usual insomnia, Tony’s exhausted enough that she falls asleep quickly. When she wakes, the sun is up and her feet are still warm, but the sheets are cool and empty beside her.

 

She gets up and dresses in the same gown she’d discarded at the forges the night before, and heads out in search of her missing Captain America. She doesn’t find him right away, but she does meet Lord Elrond, who invites her to join him for breakfast. He’s a cool, drily funny elf with fantastically expressive eyebrows, and she finds herself enjoying his company. By some miracle, he doesn’t seem offended by her losing track of time at the forges the day before.

 

“I can hardly fault such dedication to one’s craft that one might lose track of time in such a way,” he says, sipping his tea and munching almost delicately on some light, flavorful toast spread with honey. “My son often finds himself in the same predicament. He loses many hours in the library, whether reading or inscribing his own texts. I’ve never found such passion myself, but I admire it in those who have.”

 

Tony, not sure what to say to that, nods and smiles politely. “I think Rivendell itself speaks to your dedication, milord.”

 

That earns her a flicker of one of his impressive eyebrows, and a smile curls one side of his mouth. “Thank you, Ms. Stark. I’m not sure you could pay me a higher compliment.”

 

Tony’s about to respond to that, but Lindir interrupts, appearing out of nowhere as the elves are apparently all wont to do. “I beg your pardon, Lord Elrond, Ms. Stark. The guests arrive.”

 

“Ah.” Elrond stands and smooths his robes. “Excuse me, Ms. Stark.”

 

“Sure.” Tony stands, too, since it seems polite, and bows a bit awkwardly as he sweeps away, Lindir on his heels. Curious, she follows a bit more slowly, and finds herself on a balcony overlooking the courtyard they’d first arrived in the day before. There are a cluster of hardy little ponies milling about, with a number of what looks to be dwarves on their back. Next to them, taller horses are being led away by the elven grooms, and a cluster of men stands talking. She rests her elbows on the balcony rail (not missing that there are railings _here_ ) and watches as Elrond joins both groups in the courtyard, prompting a round of bowing and what must be introductions, although she can’t hear from this high up.

 

“The Man in the black and silver cloak is Denethor, the son of the Steward of Gondor,” a familiar voice says from behind her. She turns, seeing Elladan come up behind her. He leans down and pillows his forearms on the railing as well, mirroring her position. “And other representatives of Ecthelion’s court. The dwarves hail from Erebor, the Lonely Mountain.”

 

“Right,” Tony says, eyeing the assembled visitors. She shoots Elladan a grin. “Thanks. You seem glad to be home.”

 

He frowns at her, but then his brow smooths and he laughs, straightening. “Your pardon, milady. I think you’ve mistook me for my brother.” Taking a step back, he sketches an elegant, courtly bow. “My name is Elrohir, brother of Elladan. And you are Tony Stark, who travelled with Glorfindel, Estel, and Bilbo upon the Great East Road.” One brow quirks upwards. “Or have I guessed incorrectly?”

 

Tony fights a smile of her own and loses. “No, Lord Elrohir, you have not. I’m Tony, but not a lady of anything.”

 

“Lady Stark has a nice ring to it,” he counters, and she tilts her head.

 

“Well, if you insist.”

 

Elrohir straightens, smiling. “Lady Stark it is, then. And if I may, Lady Stark, I bring good news. Mr. Baggins has woken.”

 


	11. In the House of Elrond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are wizards, smiths, and long-overdue libations.

Tony would have made it to Bilbo’s room a lot faster if she hadn’t gotten lost three times on her way. Elrohir had given her directions, but every turn looks the same in the Last Homely House, or at least it seems that way when you’re trying to run while holding up too-long skirts and you have no idea where you’re going, so it takes her a good few minutes to get there.

 

By the time she does, Bilbo is sitting up, propped up against his pillows and drinking from a teacup. “It’s not tea,” he says when she hurries through the door. “They won’t let me have my tea. Honestly.”

 

“Hot water with a little lemon,” the healer says from one side of the room, where she’s sorting through various vials. “We’ll discuss tea later.”

 

“If you want to be technical about it, it _is_ later.”

 

“Hobbits,” she says on a sigh.

 

“ _Elves_ ,” Bilbo retorts. Tony looks around the room, seeing the window open to let in sunlight and fresh air, and also Steve sitting on the bench next to the door. She blinks at him, and he gives a little wave before returning to the book he has balanced on his lap. He’s sketching Bilbo, apparently, a charcoal stick held carefully in his long fingers. Tony imagines how easily he could break it, and then shakes her head slightly to clear it when she realizes she’s been staring at his hands on the page for a bit too long.

 

“Glad to see you’re awake,” she says, moving over to sit next to his bed. “You gave us a hell of a scare.”

 

“Quite unintentionally, I assure you.” Bilbo reaches over and pats her hand, setting his teacup aside. “And I owe you my thanks. The two of you saved my life on that hilltop.”

 

Tony shakes her head. “No thanks necessary.”

 

“And yet I’m giving them to you anyway.” Bilbo sends her a sidelong look, and nods in Steve’s direction. “Perhaps you can convince that one that he has no need to apologize for what happened.”

 

Tony sighs a little, turning to look at Steve, whose jaw ticks, although he doesn’t look up from his sketch. “It wasn’t your fault.”

 

“I should have seen the last one coming.”

 

“You’re not omnipotent!” Tony says, exasperated. It’s not the first time they’ve had this conversation. “And you didn’t stab him, either!”

 

Bilbo points at the side of her head. “Yes. That, indeed. Unless you go running about in a black cloak and can be in two places at once, Captain, you are not at fault.”

 

Tony just lifts a brow in Steve’s direction. He glances up at the two of them, shakes his head, and goes back to his sketch. Bilbo huffs. “Of all the- you realize, he is quite stubborn. And I know from stubborn. Why, I do believe he could give a few dwarves of my acquaintance a run for their money.”

 

Tony snorts, and makes no effort to conceal the sound. “Stubborn as a rock, and his head’s just about as dense.”

 

“Pot and rusty kettle, Stark.”

 

Tony shrugs, grinning a little. She squeezes Bilbo’s hand in return and then releases it, sitting back on the little wooden chair. “It really is good to see you awake.”

 

He relaxes into the pillows. “Nearly as good as it is to be awake myself, I imagine.” His eyes drift towards the window. “I had the strangest dreams as I slept.”

 

Tony waits for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t. There's a silver chain around his neck, and her eyes are drawn to it. Following the line of metal beneath his shirt, she can just make out a small round shape beneath the fabric. She forces her eyes down to the blanket, flinching a little when she hears the whispers over the sound of the falling water. Its voice isn't much louder than the one that is parched for a drop of whiskey; she's long accustomed to siren songs. This is just another one. 

 

She casts around for something else to talk about. “Apparently the Steward of Gondor’s son arrived, just a few minutes ago. Denethor,” she says to Steve, who looks up a bit warily. It’s a familiar name. “And I met Elrond’s other son, Elrohir.”

 

“Ah! Quite the historian, that one.” Bilbo sends Tony a sly look. “I don’t suppose you have any idea where my pipe’s wandered off to, have you?”

 

“I could ask the healer.”

 

He glares. “Perhaps not.”

 

She sends him a cheeky grin and continues on. “And a delegation of dwarves from the Lonely Mountain.”

 

That gets Bilbo’s attention.

 

Tony arches a brow, fighting back a smile as she watches the middle-aged hobbit blush like a teenager with a crush. That’s interesting.

 

But before she can elaborate, someone clears their throat in the doorway. Bilbo looks up past Tony, and a welcoming smile spreads across his face. "Gandalf," he says, his voice full of exhausted relief. "Thank goodness you've arrived."

 

Tony turns to look over her shoulder, and she can feel the same sort of relief overtaking her, the sense that things are well in order now, even before she lays eyes on the old man in the doorway.

 

Regardless of everything else they've seen that's been different from the stories, Tolkien had captured the gray wizard perfectly. The old man standing in the doorway has weathered, slightly sunburned skin, and he's clad in travel-worn gray robes, his hair hanging long and tangled down over his back and his beard so long that he can nearly tuck it into his belt. He leans heavily on a carved wooden staff, but he moves easily enough as he walks into the room.

 

"I have been here for some time, in fact," he says in a warm, grandfatherly voice, moving to the other side of the bed from where Tony sits. "But I stepped away to visit the library, and you chose that moment to awaken." He sits with a small grunt, and Tony sees Steve set his sketchbook aside and move over to stand behind her chair. Gandalf sends them both a smile. "But I see you find yourself in good company as always, Bilbo Baggins."

 

The hobbit smiles tiredly. "I seem to have a gift, old friend." He gestures to Tony. "Gandalf, these are my new but very dear friends, Tony and Steven, who along with Glorfindel quite thoroughly saved my life against the black riders."

 

Gandalf smiles up at them. "Elrond said as much, and a bit more." He winks. "I am very glad to .meet you, Tony and Steven. Bilbo is quite lucky you came along when you did."

 

"We were happy to help," Steve says politely. He doesn't offer his hand, because people don't generally do that in Middle Earth that they've found, but Tony can practically feel his arm twitching with the habitual urge.

 

"Yes, I suppose you were, given that you continued along on the road with him, keeping him safe." Gandalf pulls out his pipe, and although he ignores Bilbo's wistful look, he does send the open doorway a wary look, and after a moment he returns it to its pocket, unlit. "Not many folk would be capable or willing to do that."

 

"Well, no one ever said we were sane," Tony quips, but she quiets when Steve puts a hand on her shoulder. Fair point- they don't want anyone questioning their motives, particularly since their alibis and history are murky to nonexistent.

 

"It's not in either of us to leave someone in harm's way when we can protect them," he says, Cap voice making its first appearance in a while. "We keep people safe. It's what we do." Tony can feel her spine straightening, because that's the truth. Whatever they might fight about between themselves, protecting people is written in both of their base codes.

 

"Indeed," Gandalf says, sitting back in his chair. He meets Steve's eyes for a moment, and then looks down at Tony, who keeps the eye contact, not looking away. His eyes are an alarming shade of blue, and she has the feeling that he's looking at more than he lets on. It's the same sort of sensation she gets when she meets Wanda's eyes. "Lovely to meet you both. If you wouldn't mind, however, I have some business to discuss with Mr. Baggins-"

 

"Of course," Steve says, stepping back.

 

"Business, Gandalf?" Bilbo asks, but Tony just nods, standing.

 

"See you later, Bilbo."

 

Steve gestures for her to precede him, and sends Bilbo a smile over his shoulder. "Glad to see you doing better." He grabs his sketchbook from the corner bench, tucking it under his elbow as they take their leave.

 

They head out into the sunshine, and Tony glances down at the sketchbook Steve's carrying, not unlike the one he keeps in his pocket back home to doodle in during downtime. "What were you drawing?" she asks, both because she's curious and to head off any oncoming awkwardness as the silence extends past a minute or two.

 

He pulls the little book out from under his elbow and flips it open to a page near the middle, keeping his charcoal-stained fingers at the edges of the page so as not to smudge the lines. It's a sketch of Bilbo propped up against the pillows, streaks of light across his face cast by the branches that had been blowing outside his open window. Steve has a gift for making his drawings look like they could start moving at any moment, like they're only paused for a moment to take a breath; Bilbo looks like he's about to turn his head and look right at Steve.

 

Tony's sitting next to him, or at least she assumes it's meant to be her; all that's there so far is her outline. The top of her hair, the lines of her dress, the legs and back of the chair. The focus is obviously on Bilbo. "This is great," she says, going to turn the page and then hesitating, looking up at him. "Can I?"

 

"May I," he corrects. And as soon as he says it, he scrunches his face up at the slip, obviously ready for the inevitable harassment. She grins.

 

"Okay, Daddy. May I?"

 

"Please don't do that." He shudders. "It's so weird."

 

Then he sighs and gestures for her to look through the sketchbook. They start walking again as she pages through, Steve occasionally tugging at her elbow to move her out of the way of a rock or a branch or, at times, someone coming towards them on the path.

 

"That was an excellent kid's show in the nineties," she says absently.

 

"What was?"

 

"’So Weird’."

 

"Ah."

 

"These are really excellent, Steve." She pages carefully through the little book, although the parchment it's constructed from is actually very solid, and it feels like it would be difficult to tear. The little book, a bit larger than the size of her hand laid flat, had looked much smaller when he'd been holding it. Her hands, covered in tiny scars and callouses from her work though they might be, are about half the size of Steve's.

 

Inside are sketches illustrating things all the way back to the beginning of their journey with Bilbo. There's a picture of the great room in Goldberry's house, and another of Tom Bombadil's hat bobbing through the bushes. A third shows the outline of one of the barrows, its entrance a dark, gaping maw.

 

Past those are a few unfinished lines, and then the one he’d been working on just now, Bilbo sitting back against the pillows with the ornate elven headboard arching up around and behind him like a tree itself, or maybe a throne. And in the chair next to the bed is Tony herself; her face is drawn in, but the lines of her torso and the long skirt are rough, and her hair is a dark smudge down her back. Her face is done, though; she’s grinning at Bilbo, probably about to say something inappropriate.

 

And as she pages back towards the beginning of the book, she sees other drawings of Bilbo, one of Glorfindel, but more of her. Her face, what her hair must have looked like from behind, all frizzy and falling out of its braid. Wearing the clothes Goldberry had given her. Wearing just the shift she’d slept in, in Goldberry’s house. Her hand, wrapped around her sword’s hilt, all her old scars and burns done in detail.

 

It’s… she doesn’t really know what it means, to be honest. Or maybe she does, but she just doesn’t want to get her hopes up. The drawings are all so detailed, so… intimate, in a way she can’t really put into words. “Steve,” she starts, but she doesn’t continue, not sure what to say.

 

“It’s too much,” he says, running a hand over his face and reaching over to take the sketchbook back. She snaps it shut and tightens her fingers on it, though, not letting him tug it away.

 

“It’s not too much,” she says firmly. “I was just- it’s a surprise. After everything.” She looks down at it, then up at him. “I’m not mad. It’s just- you were the one who said you needed time.”

 

He sighs. “I do. But that doesn’t mean I don’t still-”

 

“I know.”

 

He meets her eyes again, hesitant. “Do you?”

 

She smiles a little. “Well, I’d hoped.” She swallows. “Me too. I still do, too.”

 

The smile that spreads slowly across his face is the one that she so rarely gets to see, the relaxed, almost giddy little boy grin that Captain America doesn’t let loose very often. She finds herself grinning back, feeling butterflies start fluttering around in the pit of her stomach as his eyes drop down to her mouth. She closes her eyes most of the way, leans up as he bends down-

 

“Ahem.”

 

They jolt apart, and Tony turns her head to see Alben watching them from twenty feet or so away, arms folded and one brow raised.

 

“I came to see if you had rested and eaten,” he says, not apologizing for the interruption despite the sharp glare Tony’s sending him. “If you have, we can continue our work this morning.”

 

Steve, having straightened, looks both surprised and pleased. “He’s making sure you ate and slept,” he muses. “I like you already.”

 

Tony rolls her eyes. “Alben, chief of Rivendell’s smiths, allow me to introduce Captain Rogers, my nanny.”

 

There’s no hint of so much as a smile from Alben as he bows his head politely, and Steve just rolls his eyes. “You need more than a nanny,” he retorts, still smiling. “Go ahead. I’ll see you later. I’m going to check back in with Bilbo.” He hesitates, and then leans over and presses his lips against her temple, his fingers brushing over her arm. He murmurs against her hair, “I heard there’s a feast tonight in the Hall of Fire to welcome all the guests. Don’t forget to shower,” he adds as he pulls away.

 

“You could come remind me,” Tony suggests in kind, wiggling her brows. He just shakes his head, turning to go, but as he leaves she can see the flush on the back of his neck, and she grins again. Point to Stark.

 

Alben looks so bored he might actually fall asleep. “If you’re finished with your mating dance for now?”

 

“Let’s just say I’m in phase one,” Tony says, moving to follow him back towards the forges.

 

“I have no desire to hear anything about it.” Alben glances down at her. “And you’ve forgotten appropriate clothing, Stark. Again.”

 

Life had been much easier before she’d had to worry about fancy dresses.

 

It occurs to Tony somewhere around early afternoon, as she takes a water break and eyes the sun still high in the sky, that she's somehow managed to put herself on what is more or less a normal sleep schedule for the first time in her life (or at least since she went away to boarding school and started sneaking out to drink and do other things she was far too young to do, in retrospect). Without electricity, something she never could have fathomed living without, and especially on the road, once the sun goes down, it's difficult to do much of anything else. Here in Rivendell, and in their brief sojourns in other oases of civilization since arriving in Middle Earth, the lamps and candlelight can extend the day somewhat, but she's still exhausted and ready to sleep well before midnight.

 

It feels like it’s almost blasphemous for Tony not to miss the convenience of electricity, for her to have become adept enough at lighting candles and fires that, while the convenience of flipping a switch would be welcome, it's not necessary. And how she's managing to function without her tech, she honestly has no idea. The first week or two of travelling had been miserable- she'd felt her hand twitching towards her pocket, reaching out of habit for her phone or a tablet or what have you the second she felt bored. But the benefit of an exhaustive amount of walking and exercise, she supposes, is that her mind had been for the most part too tired to think much at all, and she'd fallen into her bedroll every night, asleep before her mind had time to wander.

 

And once she'd gotten used to the travel, it had been- quiet. Her mind, always a cacophony of thoughts and ideas and frustrations and a constant reminder of everything she had to do, had grown quiet, almost relaxed. She's never felt this way before, not since she was a child, at least. This whole adventure has been exhausting and terrifying and stressful, but in its way, like a vacation. She's been avoiding the idea of going back to where everything is so loud and fast and everything needs to be done immediately. Their friends are there, and they _do_ need to go back, back to their responsibilities and the team and everything that goes along with it but- she wants to see this through, and though she'd never say so to Steve, she wouldn't mind staying a little longer.

 

Alben approves of her work the day before, and lets her start work on repairing what is apparently a more common sword, which he says is good practice. It's also free labor, Tony thinks privately, but she's not going to complain- the man (well, elf) is a font of information, and she's fascinated by all of the detailed work being done in Rivendell's smithies. She's also surprised by the amount of metallurgic knowledge the elves have acquired, mostly through firsthand experimentation- it makes sense for immortal beings to have learned a lot, though. When you have a few thousand years to research and experiment, you learn a lot, or so she assumes.

 

Once she’d repaired the blade, she’d asked him about the elven smiths’ engraving techniques, since the original blow that had broken the steel had disrupted an intricate set of rune-like inscriptions. Of course, all of the elven script looks like runes to her, and she has no idea which might be decorative and which actually say something.

 

This leads into a fascinating discussion about the elves’ and wizards’ use of runes in magic. Apparently any number of things, including their shape, how they’re carved, what they’re carved _into_ , and the tools used to create them, can lead to them having various properties that definitely sound magical, even if Alben seems to be going to great pains to avoid saying it in so many words.

 

Tony, of course, naturally asks how they work, curious both as someone who’s generally very annoyed by the lack of scientific explanation for magic in the world she comes from, and as someone who adores Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. Is it so wrong to want an explanation for how Stephen Strange’s fancy-shmancy finger-twiddling spells work? She doesn’t think that’s wrong.

 

Alben explains, and although the following discussion involves far too many non-specific references to supernatural forces influencing various aspects of the environment, at least it’s a high-level explanation for how, exactly, the damned things work. He’s already leagues ahead of Dr. Strange and his stupid Count Chokula cloak even after just the one lesson, that’s all Tony has to say.

 

They’re so absorbed that neither of them notices the sun sinking closer to the horizon until it’s actually growing dark and they’re interrupted by a red-headed female elf who politely introduces herself as Eliant, and informs Tony that she’s there to assist her in preparing for Elrond’s fancy soiree. It’s a feast in the Hall of Fire, which apparently means dressing to the nines, and Tony’s really starting to wonder where all the fancy clothes in her size (or close to it) came from so quickly. She brings this up as she follows Eliant down a winding stair that appears to lead underground, deep into the mountainside. It’s a wide stair, though, and well-travelled, and she doubts she’s heading down to the dungeon or to her doom, but one never knows.

 

“Lord Elrond has a number of human guests on a fairly regular basis,” Eliant says over her shoulder as they reach the bottom of the stair and start down a torchlit corridor. The air is warm and damp, and smells faintly of sulfur, the smell growing stronger as they continue down the hallway. At the end are two doors, and Eliant takes the one on the left, holding it open for Tony to pass through. “At least every few decades, and often more frequently. It’s convenient for everyone to keep appropriately-sized garments on hand that can be easily altered if necessary.” She smiles, eyeing the inches of fabric that drag on the floor next to Tony’s feet. “Although most who come to visit us are a bit taller than you are, milady, I must admit.”

 

“I’ll have you know that I’m an average-sized human where I come from,” Tony says, sticking her nose in the air and then turning to look around the room. Her mouth drops open, and she forgets any further protest she’d been about to make. “Oh my God, it’s a hot bath. Marry me.”

 

“Are you proposing to me or to the bath?” Eliant asks, laughing as she starts to unlace her dress. Tony just shakes her head, staring at what must be a hot spring, based on the sulfurous smell permeating the air. It’s empty aside from them, but it’s the size of a medium-sized swimming pool, rather than a hot tub. She glances at Eliant, who seems unbothered by undressing in front of her and is in the process of shedding her gown, stepping out of it like a discarded chrysalis. She’s not wearing anything underneath, and Tony stares a little, unable to help it. The elf’s skin is like alabaster, and she has sharp features, almost foxlike. Her eyes are blue, and elves seem to have very little body hair, Tony notes, which becomes very clear when she turns back around to look at Tony, completely unclothed and looking wickedly amused.

 

“Would you like some assistance?” she offers lightly. Tony looks down at her filthy borrowed tunic and breeches and shakes her head.

 

“I’m good,” she says, reaching down and tugging the tunic up over her head. The makeshift bra she’d borrowed (more a corset than anything else, but one that lets her breathe) comes off next, and she sighs as the sweaty material leaves her skin, although she has to fight the urge to fold her arms over her chest. She’s not usually ashamed of the Gordian knot of scar tissue over her repaired sternum, but standing next to the specimen of elven perfection here, she feels a bit inadequate. More so, even, as she forces her arms to stay at her sides and busies her hands with stripping off the breeches and tugging off the boots. Finally undressed, she pauses a moment to be glad for the vanity that had led to her getting those electrolysis treatments back in her partying days, because while she has no problem with women and body hair in general, she’s not sure she could have handled being smelly and unshaven next to this elf woman.

 

Even so, she’s awkward enough. She does smell, as previously noted, she’s tanned and sunburned from the neck up but nowhere else, and she’s uncomfortably aware of the various scars that decorate her skin, from the years of hammering metal into shape and working with huge, unwieldy machinery. And all of that was _before_ Afghanistan and Iron Woman. The once-over that Eliant gives her, though, is appreciative, and it makes her lift her chin a little, following the taller woman down into the water.

 

All of her self-conscious thoughts disappear the instant the hot water washes over her skin. It’s _glorious_.

 

“I have not had a hot bath in _months_ ,” she groans, sinking down onto her knees so that the water comes up past her shoulders. It reaches up to about her ribcage when she stands, sluicing over and around her breasts and making them float a little as she moves. She leans back, wetting her hair, and then straightens to wring it out with a sigh. “Thank you for this. This is wonderful.”

 

When she looks over her shoulder, Eliant is watching her with another smile, this one a bit different from the one before. Her eyes linger on Tony’s arms and shoulders, which are a bit broader than average and hard with muscle, both from the work she does and from controlling and fighting in a titanium suit of armor, one she has to be able to move around without the hydraulics’ help if the power goes down.

 

The elf woman seems appreciative of the results of all that, and Tony doesn’t stop her looking, although she does turn to face her fully, instead of only side-on. It seems best to head this one off at the pass, all things considered, attractive as Eliant might be. And she is, she is exactly Tony’s type, and Tony has been going through a dry spell for over a year now, so the thought is admittedly a tempting one. “I should tell you that I’m very attached to Captain Rogers.” Her lips quirk up in a wry smile. “Intimately, exclusively attached.” Albeit in an unofficial capacity at the moment.

 

Eliant’s still smiling in return, and she sighs. “Yes, he’s quite beautiful, too. I’m envious. Ah, well.” She moves over to a tray on the side of the spring, which is tiled, although Tony can feel unshaped stone beneath her toes, worn smooth and comfortable to stand on by the years and the minerals in the water. “One can appreciate beauty close by and at a distance.” She holds up a bottle, and her smile has grown a bit wicked again. “I could still wash your hair?”

 

Tony eyes the knotted mess she’d swept over her shoulder and makes a face. “I may take you up on that one.”


	12. The Hall of Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our Heroes do not dance.

Eliant has long, strong fingers, and by the time she’s washed Tony’s hair and then smoothed it with an herbal-scented oil, Tony’s nearly asleep. “‘S Steve gonna get this treatment, too?” she asks tiredly, leaning back against the edge of the pool.

 

“Aye,” Eliant says from above, outside the pool now and wearing a robe. She seems to be brewing tea. “Erestor sent Lindir to show him to the ellyn’s bath.” She nods in the direction of the wall closest to her, and Tony imagines Steve in a pool like this. She abruptly wants to go over there.

 

She’s respecting Steve’s boundaries, though. Difficult though that might be, right now. Sighing, she follows Eliant out of the lovely warm water and pulls on another of the robes, sitting down next to the elf woman and taking the cup of tea she’s offered a moment later.

 

It tastes terrible, like bitter herbs and black licorice, and she almost spits it out. She manages to keep it down, but it’s a close thing, and she’s sure her smile is more a grimace than anything else when she sets the cup down. “Delicious. I’ve never been a tea drinker, though, so I doubt I can properly appreciate it-”

 

“Drink it down, milady,” Eliant says firmly, and Tony arches a brow, making no move to pick the cup back up.

 

“I’d like to ask why.”

 

Eliant sips her own tea. “Because it will prevent you from getting with child.”

 

If Tony had been drinking at the time, she’d’ve done a spit-take. “What?” She looks down at the mug. “Are you serious? That- sounds unreliable.”

 

“Human methods may be ineffective, unreliable at best,” Eliant informs her, still sipping her own tea serenely. “This mixture is not.”

 

Tony looks down at the cup with new eyes, wavering. It really does both smell and taste like licorice; nothing nice or cherry-flavored, either, but the bitter sort that really only had a market back among folks old enough to fondly remember what they had to suffer through as ‘candy’ before Hershey’s and Cadbury’s came along.

 

Come to think of it, Steve would probably like it. Bleh. Although it wouldn’t exactly do much for him. Tony wrinkles her nose.

 

“Not to be rude,” she says, when Eliant sends her an odd look. “I appreciate the gesture. Truly, deeply appreciate it, even if nothing happens tonight to justify it. It’s just that… I really hate tea.”

 

The elf smiles into her cup. “Truly, I never much liked it either, myself. But needs must. I suppose one can accustom oneself to nearly anything, with the proper motivation.”

 

Tony raises her brows, inhaling the licorice-scented steam. “Fair point.” She takes another sip, and valiantly suppresses her grimace. “But if you ever have the opportunity to try something cold coffee- might be named java, or something similar- trust me. Try it. Superior method for caffeine intake, no contest.”

 

“Caffeine?” Eliant asks, looking puzzled.

 

“Something that gives you a burst of energy when you eat it or drink it? Like sugar, only… more.”

 

“Oh, like black or red tea.” The elf nods. “I shall keep the recommendation in mind. But I’m afraid there is no caffeine in this tea- it’s merely herbs.”

 

Tony sighs and looks down at the goopy green cup. There’s clearly no winning in this situation.

 

“Tomorrow morning, too, huh?”

 

Eliant hands her a firmly-stuffed packet of herbs. Tied to the string holding the pouch shut is a small roll of parchment. “I’ve included the ingredients and their portions so you can acquire them when you run out, though I’m certain you’ll memorize them before long.” She smiles wryly. “Afterwards, every morning, and in the evening before if you can, just in case. If you can’t make a fire, chew the leaves. A half-teaspoon’s worth or so will do, and the benefits will balance out the taste.” Delicately, she adds, “In such an event, I suggest you ensure you’re well-supplied with soft leaves. You’ll need to take frequent breaks to relieve yourself. Ingestion is effective, but rather messy.”

 

Tony blanches a bit, but she soldiers on and gulps down another swallow of the tea. “Noted.”

 

 

An hour or so later, once dark has fully fallen, Tony makes her way back to the guest cottage to find Steve so they can walk together to the Hall of Fire. She meets him on the path about halfway there; she sees him from behind, but his shoulders are impossible to mistake for someone else’s, especially amongst the much-leaner elves. As she gets closer, she can see that his hair is trimmed, much neater than the shaggy length it had grown into.

 

He turns to face her, obviously hearing her coming, and she does a double-take. His face is smooth, clean-shaven in the way it hasn’t been since they’d first arrived in this place, weeks ago in the Shire. “I almost don’t recognize you without the beard,” she says, picking up her borrowed skirts and approaching. He’s wearing blue to her burgundy, and as always it’s his color. The dark blue sits comfortably on his shoulders, and someone must have done some fast tailoring today because it hugs his waist perfectly, too, like the best sort of three-piece suit. His breeches are gray, or maybe brown, hard to tell in the dim light, and he’s wearing tall, comfortable-looking boots.  “You look great.”

 

“So do you,” he says, looking her up and down, from her hair tied neatly back out of her face (she’d fought any attempts by Eliant at fancy braids that would take forever to take out later) and her dress laced up the right way, so that no bra of any sort is necessary and it does nice things to her figure. It’s still a bit too long, but would have taken too long to hem, so she lifts the skirts with one hand as she walks (which is _fine_ because she’s _not short_ ). His eyes are a bit dark as they llift back up from her chest, and he keeps them very firmly on hers, not looking anywhere else again. “You look beautiful,” he says, frankly honest as always, and she fights back the urge to elbow him, mock-curtsying a little instead.

 

“Shall we, Captain?” she asks when she straightens, crooking her arm. Shaking his head, he bites back a smile and holds out his elbow for her to take. They make their way to the Hall of Fire for the most part in silence, and Tony takes the opportunity to steal looks at Steve’s profile on the way. She almost misses the beard; he looks like a stranger without it, like someone she hasn’t seen in a long time. More like Captain America again, as he hasn’t looked for a while, she realizes with a jolt.

 

 

 

Dinner is an interesting affair. The food is mostly free of protein- there’s a venison dish that’s passed around, and Tony gives all but a few bites of her portion to Steve. He hasn’t lost much weight yet, but he will soon if he doesn’t keep up his caloric intake, and she can get by on much less.

 

She makes a mental note to ask Lindir or Eliant about requesting some lembas, if possible. When Bilbo had shared his waybread with them, it had even filled Steve up, albeit in larger quantities than Tony or Bilbo had needed. Bilbo had been surprised, never having met a Big Person who eats as much as a hobbit, and Tony had just watched them both with bemusement. She hasn’t had any trouble remembering to eat, lately, what with the constant physical exertion of walking everywhere, but even replacing all the calories she burns doing it, she doesn’t eat nearly as much as a hobbit, apparently.

 

If Tony can request some lembas be served to Steve whenever they eat, that should go a long way towards his four thousand some calories per day. And if or when they end up on the road again, they’ll just need to plan ahead.

 

She’s lost in thought for long enough during dinner that she misses a lot of the conversation, but the actual time at the table doesn’t last long as various elves rise and start complicated, medieval dances that involve a lot of walking in circles and pacing out steps. It’s like something between ballet and square-dancing with a very slow tempo, and she’s glad to see that the humans and dwarves in attendance seem as puzzled by it as she is. Steve, she knows, will just avoid dancing with the fire of a thousand suns; there’s really no need to ask his opinion on it, though she does lean over and murmur, “And I thought the Charleston took coordination.”

 

 He snorts into his wineglass, and his cheeks flush slightly when a few of the elves sitting around them send him an odd look. Tony grins into her own water goblet, having refused any wine for obvious reasons. Considering the flush on the faces of the human delegation at the far end of the long table, she thinks she made the right face. She’s not even sure Steve’s flush is entirely due to her making him laugh, although that’s evidence enough that the wine is particularly strong; normally she has to work a lot harder to get an inappropriate reaction out of him at things like this.

 

‘Things like this,’ indeed. Despite the medieval clothes, the fact that the dinner’s taking place on an ornately-decorated terrace with braziers lit around the table to keep everyone warm enough, despite all the candles in tapers and the lute and harp music being played in the corner, it’s not unlike most fundraiser dinners she’s attended. Everyone picking at the expensive food and watching their words very carefully until about their second or third glass of wine, and then the laughter gets louder, as do the rest of the voices, particularly from the dwarven contingent, who seem to burst into raucous laughter every few minutes.

 

Well, almost all of them do. The tallest of them, clad in scale mail and a furred mantle, is the only one who’s not laughing and talking loudly, probably because he’s sitting away from the rest, up at the head of the table with the important folks. He’s wearing a black fur mantle and dull-colored beads in his hair that look like iron, at least from this distance, no crown or any other jewelry to be seen, but Tony would bet good money that that’s the dwarf king. He has rich copper skin and a mane of black hair, some of it caught into braids, and his beard is bound tightly into a single braid with a bead at the tip. He looks, frankly, like he could do some damage, but his expression is neutral and almost severe as he addresses Elrond without any apparent hostility.

 

After a while, Elrond stands and thanks his guests for joining him, and invites them to join him in the Hall of Fire, which is aptly named, a cavernous room containing a large, ornately-carved circular fireplace in the center. Elrond takes up a chair that looks rather throne-like next to the fire, and Bilbo, who’d sat near the head of the table during the meal, is directed to a hobbit- or dwarf-sized armchair. Gandalf sits with them, along with a few other important-looking elves that Tony hasn’t met. Judging by the fancy circlets and robes, though, they’re probably important.

 

Well, she’s not really interested in slow-motion harp-dancing, so might as well go be social. She sets her water goblet down on a little carved table thing and grabs Steve’s elbow, tugging. “Come on, let’s stop playing wallflowers and go talk to Bilbo.”

 

“I don’t think we’re wallflowers if there’s more than one person standing together,” he argues, but he follows in the direction she’s tugging without any other argument.

 

“We were standing right up against the wall and ignoring the action,” she counters, and he shoots the dance floor, such as it is, a pointed look. Not much action going on there. She grimaces. “Okay, point.”

 

“Thank you.” They approach the probably important contingent, but before they can reach them, the serious dwarf and the two rowdiest of the rest of the group have gone up to Bilbo. They’re still too far away for Tony to hear any of the conversation, but the two louder dwarves are talking over one another, until the older one finally snaps something that doesn’t sound anything like Westron (and don’t get her started on how everyone seems to be speaking English, not some other language, but now’s not the time for that academic debate). The blond one subsides first, then the darker-haired one, and the serious dwarf opens his mouth to say something to Bilbo, who suddenly looks very small in his armchair.

 

“Steve!” he calls over, having spotted Steve’s hair, at least, over the heads of the people near them. He beckons, his voice sounding audibly relieved. “And Tony, too. Wonderful. I would like to introduce you to some of my friends from the East.”

 

When they get close enough, Tony can see that the hobbit is looking a little overwhelmed. Polite as ever, though, he gestures to the dwarves. “May I present Thorin Oakenshield, King Under the Mountain of Erebor, and his nephews, Princes Fili and Kili, the sons of Vili.”

 

Tony blinks a little, and glances up at Steve, who looks more than slightly surprised, himself. He’s the real fan of _The Hobbit_ , of the two of them- Tony had always appreciated the greater scope and detail of the trilogy, but Steve had read and loved _The Hobbit_ back in the forties. It’s probably always going to be his favorite. And they’re both understandably a little confused that the character whose death was the climax of the story is standing here, alive- then again, it’s not the strangest thing that’s happened to them since they’d come here.

 

They really only look startled for a beat or two, luckily, and Steve collects himself first, bowing slightly. “Steve Rogers, at your service. This is Tony Stark.”

 

Tony, unsure of whether she’s supposed to bow because (she assumes) that’s what dwarves do, as in the books, or curtsy because she’s in a dress, goes with the less embarrassing option and bows. “Also at your service.”

 

Thorin nods regally, although the look he sends them is considering, and not necessarily in a positive way. His nephews, on the other hand, seem affable enough. The dark-haired one, Kili, asks Bilbo, “So these are the two who saved you from the Black Riders?”

 

“That’s us,” Tony says, squeezing Steve’s elbow and pulling out the press smile.

 

“It’s very fortunate you were nearby,” Thorin observes. The way he says the word ‘fortunate’ doesn’t sound very positive, and the look he’s sending them now is downright suspicious. “Two- mercenaries, was it? Happening along a hobbit attacked in the Shire, with the skills to drive off such legendary creatures.”

 

“Thorin, for pity’s sake,” Bilbo says sharply, his tone startling enough that the dwarf king turns to look at him, obviously not having expected to be addressed. His heavy brow is still furrowed, but Bilbo is just staring up at him from his chair, and he sniffs. “They are guests in Elrond’s house, as are you, and they are _my_ friends.”

 

Thorin looks taken aback, but he nods. The look he sends Tony isn’t particularly pleasant, but he bows and grates out to Elrond and Bilbo, “Will you excuse me?”

 

Elrond inclines his head, and then watches the dwarf king leave. His nephews look as though they’d like to stay, but a barked word from their uncle have them turning to stride off after bidding the rest goodnight.

 

Bilbo sinks back down into his armchair with a sigh and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Elrond, I am terribly sorry-”

 

“Don’t apologize, Bilbo.” Elrond pats his hand lightly. “He was correct- you were very fortunate that your new friends were nearby.” He looks up at Steve, then Tony. “And I should like to speak to you both tomorrow about your journey. I would like to have all parts of the story recorded.”

 

“For posterity, of course,” Gandalf says from behind them, and Tony jumps, having forgotten he was there. But there he is, puffing on his pipe and looking thoughtful. “I should like to hear your story, as well.” He puffs again. “I regret that I could not be there with Bilbo when help was needed.”

 

“You have given me your help many times over,” Bilbo says with a dry sort of chuckle. “I hardly think you can be there every time I’m in any sort of danger, Gandalf.”

 

“Yes, well.” The wizard sets the pipe down with a huff. “I had hoped you would not be in danger of losing your life again, my friend. Not before you were old and gray like me.”

 

“It’s not the danger that concerns me,” Bilbo says, reaching under his collar to fiddle with something. Elrond sets down his wine with a sigh, glancing sidelong at Tony, who is looking up at the ceiling, avoiding any chance of spotting the Ring.

 

It’s no different from the wine, she reflects. She can feel her fingers tingling with the need to reach out and touch it, examine it, try to figure out how it works. It’s a puzzle, a mystery, a weapon she wants to disassemble and poke at. It doesn’t offer oblivion like the wine does, but it’s temptation all the same, and Tony Stark knows temptation. Knows its siren call very well.

 

And she’s self-destructed enough times in her life to know when to look away. When Elrond looks at her, his silver eyes unreadable, she just smiles, shaking her head. “It’s best we do not speak of it yet,” he says finally with a slight nod in her direction. “I assume you have guessed the reason for our guests’ arrival, but they have not yet been told.”

 

“We figured,” Steve says. “We’re happy to help, though, however we can.”

 

“Thank you,” Elrond says. His eyes tick sideways, to the room’s entrance, and he stands, nodding to Steve. “We shall have much to discuss tomorrow.”

 

“Yes, sir.” Steve watches Elrond move away from them to greet the new arrivals; both of his sons, it looks like, with Estel walking on one of their arms. Elrohir, maybe? Elladan hadn’t had facial hair, but the one she’d met on the balcony had had a short beard, so that must be Elrohir. Estel, meanwhile, is wearing a deep green gown and looks quite a bit more grown up than she had on the road with them in the past weeks.

 

The small wave and the grin she sends them belies her appearance, though, as she moves over to greet them all, leaving Elrond to speak with his sons. Tony watches Elrohir as Estel moves away, as his eyes track her path across the room. His eyes tick to Tony’s, though, and then move back to his father. Tony arches a brow but smiles at Estel. “I barely recognize the Ranger we met on the road.”

 

Estel smiles wryly. “I’d prefer breeches and boots, but Lord Elrond would be furious.”

 

Tony hums, refraining from wrinkling her nose. She’s familiar with the sentiment. “So you’re fashionably late tonight?”

 

“Oh! Yes.” Estel shakes her head. “Glorfindel has been leading patrols to hunt down signs of the black riders along the banks of the river. He found eight of their mounts, but not the ninth. He’s just returned, and brought the news to the twins.”

 

“Only eight,” Steve says, and she nods.

 

“And eight black cloaks, but not the creatures that were beneath them. There was no sign of the ninth.”

 

“Great,” he says, looking out towards the open window as though he can see beyond it, all the way out to the Fords.

 

“I suppose they don’t really have bodies, so it would be difficult to track them if they weren’t wearing anything physical,” Estel continues, looking thoughtful, but Gandalf clears his throat.

 

“Perhaps this conversation should be best saved for later,” he says, nodding to the humans nearby, clustered in a group and listening to the one wearing black, a white horn at his hip. He’s watching their group closely, but makes no move to approach.

 

“Yes,” Bilbo says with a sigh of his own. “I believe that may be enough celebration for me.” He goes to lever himself to his feet, and everyone standing (or sitting, in Gandalf’s case) near him goes to help. “Honestly, all of you. I’m quite capable.”

 

“I shall join you, I think,” Gandalf says, pushing to himself to his feet as well, albeit with a great deal more creaking. “It has been quite a long day. I bid you all good night.” They move slowly towards the door, one of them leaning heavily on a staff and the other looking like he wouldn’t mind having one.

 

It’s an hour or two more before Tony and Steve say their goodnights, or alternately make their escape- it feels like a bit of both, to be honest. Estel took it upon herself to introduce them to nearly everyone at the shindig, and although she’d been very good at keeping things polite and steering them away from long, droning conversations with the older elves (her words, not Tony’s, although Tony won’t disagree), there is no chance she’ll ever remember all the names. At one point, elves in attendance started singing long, slow, sad ballads about dead heroes and fair maidens, or in one notable case, a dead hero who was also quite the fair maiden, apparently. And what’s the polite response to that, really? Smile and golf-clap when the song’s over, that’s what. Or at least that’s Tony’s best guess, and it seemed to be acceptable.

 

They’d also been introduced again to the sons of Elrond, with whom Estel appears to be close, although not, she assures Tony in a sisterly way. She makes a point to make sure that’s clear, actually, that she hadn’t met the twins until she’d been full-grown, as they’d spent quite a few years living with their mother’s family on the other side of the Misty Mountains (Lothlorien! a voice in the back of Tony’s mind cheered) and then patrolling in those same mountains with the Dunedain. By the time they’d returned to their father’s House, Estel had arrived, been unofficially adopted by Elrond, and grew into a young adult.

 

The explanation is long and detailed, and full of anecdotes of how Estel admires them and how much they’ve taught her, helping her learn to be a Ranger. Tony hadn’t commented, but she was still a bit relieved to finally escape into the cool night air when Steve had asked if she was ready to go. With everyone around them getting pretty far into their cups, she’d figured it was for the best to get away from all the wine, and he’d started to get that twitchy look she’s familiar with from various fundraisers he’s been dragged to back home.

 

“Better?” she asks as they make their way back to the little guest house. He lets out a long breath, and reaches over, slipping her hand out of his elbow. She feels a little disappointed for a moment, but that only lasts until he wraps the arm around her shoulders instead, his hand a warm weight on her arm.

 

“Much,” he says emphatically. “I’m ready for bed.” And then he winces. “Not that- I mean- Not that I _wouldn’t-_ ”

 

She snorts, and reaches up across to her shoulder to pat his hand. “I’m tired, too,” she says, her voice gentler than it usually is when she isn’t this tired.

 

He relaxes, one corner of his mouth curling up. “Long night.”

 

“Yeah.” She leans her head on his shoulder as they walk, and the rest of the way is quiet.

 

They curl into bed together again, this time without any awkward permissions or hesitation. Tony feels like her limbs are full of lead, she’s so tired, and she collapses onto her pillow with a long, heavy breath. Steve puts out the candles and lights the brazier, and then he climbs in with her. She reaches out and grabs his shirt, tugging him closer, and he goes without hesitation, wrapping his arm around her middle and burying his face in her hair.

 

She’s almost asleep when she feels him brush her hair away and press a kiss against her throat, just under her jaw. “Night,” she mumbles, eyes closed and halfway to dreaming. If he responds, she’s asleep before she hears it.

 


	13. The Counsel of Elrond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our Heroes receive some valuable advice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Art masterpost](http://sleepyoceanprince.tumblr.com/post/153494709773/cap-im-bang-art-to-ironforgeds-gigantic-epic-and) by the amazing Fynndin!

They sleep late the next day. Even Steve, usually up with the sun, doesn’t so much as twitch until it’s well into the sky. Tony wakes to find him still tangled around her, this time doing his full-on octopus impression. She doesn’t want to move, because he’s warm and the bed is incredibly comfortable, but her bladder won’t let her stay still for as long as she’d like, and finally she slips out. When she comes back, he’s still in bed but awake now, on his back staring up at the ceiling, one arm thrown up over his head and making a really good attempt at busting out of the snug tunic he’d worn to bed.

 

She pauses just inside the room, having been about to climb back in bed until her feet were warm again, and they just stare at each other for a minute, Steve sleep-tousled and only just awake, and Tony very aware of the thin shift she’d worn to bed, nothing underneath it.

 

Steve moves first, sliding the hand not over his head out from under the covers. He turns his palm up, lets it rest on the mattress, and meets Tony’s eyes. She doesn’t see any hesitation there, just sleepy desire, and her feet are moving before she realizes that she’s going.

 

She climbs up onto the bed, moves a knee on either side of his hips so she can look down at him. “Are you sure?” she asks carefully.

 

He reaches up, touches her cheek with one hand. His thumb runs down over her mouth, and she opens her lips to suck it inside, biting gently. He shudders beneath her, his eyes going dark. “Are you?” he asks, his voice low.

 

“ _God_ , yes.”

 

He smiles slowly and sits up beneath her. No hands or anything, those stupid fucking abs just contract and there he is, inches away. “Good,” he murmurs, leaning in. His mouth ghosts over hers, moving to where he’d kissed her the night before, just under her jaw, and biting down.

 

But then he stiffens, and not in the fun way, his whole body going still. A few seconds later, there’s a knock on the guest house door, and Tony drops her head onto his shoulder with a stifled groan. The elf calls out to them that breakfast is being served for the guests in the Main Hall, and that Lord Elrond has asked to see them in an hour’s time.

 

Tony muffles a curse in Steve’s shoulder.

 

They dress and go down to breakfast, and Tony feels like her skin is vibrating. She does make a point of flagging down one of the servers, and as they sit down and fill their plates, the elf returns and sets a plate of sweet-smelling squares of flatbread in front of Steve.

 

“Ooh, lembas!” Kili sits down across from them and starts scooping food onto his plate. “That stuff’s delicious,” he says as he takes a heaping spoonful of oatmeal.

 

The server says skeptically, “And how does a dwarf know of elvish waybread?”

 

“Because I’m friends with an elf- what do you think?” he retorts, but he just shrugs at Steve and Tony, otherwise ignoring the server, who sniffs and strides off. “Obviously it’s not him,” Kili adds around his oatmeal, snorting.

 

Steve just looks over at Tony, who shrugs, biting back a smile. “Bilbo mentioned it. You haven’t been eating enough.”

 

He sighs a little and looks down at the lembas, picking up the first piece. “Thank you,” he says quietly. It sounds heartfelt; Tony imagines being hungry but pretending you’re not, and tries not to think about how that must be a familiar sensation for him, because that’s a sad thought, and this has started out as a damned good day so far. Probably only going to get better, if they can have half an hour of privacy at some point…

 

Of course, as soon as she thinks that, it’s ruined.

 

“Where’s your brother?” Steve asks Kili once he chews and swallows. The dwarf prince seems to have no compunction about human table manners, though, and he talks with his mouth full, swallowing with an enormous gulp.

 

“Elrond’s secret meeting,” he says, shoveling more oatmeal into his mouth. Tony is alarmingly reminded of Barton, but she doesn’t have time to dwell on the comparison before the meaning behind that hits her.

 

“You mean the Council of Elrond?” she blurts. She sends Steve a wide-eyed look; he glances around them, determines no one had heard, and sends her a sharp headshake. She ignores him. “But- I thought we’d go?”

 

“They hardly know us,” he says practically. “Thorin’s concerns were valid. We came out of nowhere. We could hardly expect them to invite us to a secret council meeting for heads of state.”

 

Tony feels betrayed by every single piece of _Lord of the Rings_ fanfiction she’s ever read.

 

As she sits there trying to digest this (instead of digesting her breakfast, whose existence she has forgotten entirely), Kili finishes his oatmeal and pushes his bowl aside. “Well, I was going to go sneak up onto the balcony above the council and listen in, if you want to come along?”

 

Tony perks up, but Steve puts his hand on her arm. “No,” he says drily.

 

She pouts, but he looks unmoved, still munching on his lembas.

 

She supposes he does have a point, in terms of earning their hosts’ trust, and she sighs. “Fine, fine. No sneaking.” To Kili, she adds, “You probably shouldn’t, either. I doubt your uncle will appreciate it.”

 

He snorts. “Please. Espionage is a well-known part of dwarven politics. He’d be disappointed if I didn’t try. Besides, Fili’s there with him, and Uncle knows Fee’ll tell me everything anyway.” He makes a face and shrugs. “Limited seating, so the heir gets to go. I understand. I just want to hear it for myself.” He pushes himself to his feet with a friendly wave. “I’ll let you know what I find out!”

 

“That’s okay-” Steve starts, but the dwarf is already gone, and he shakes his head, going back to his food. Tony just folds her arms on the table and pillows her head on them, pouting again.

 

“Are you done?” Steve asks after a minute or two, taking a sip from his goblet.

 

“Nope.”

 

 

 

Kili doesn’t return by the time an hour has passed, so they leave to meet Lord Elrond in his library, having discussed what they should say to Lord Elrond as they’d been getting dressed. Steve is, not surprisingly, in favor of complete honesty, but Tony’s not sure that won’t get them locked up. It sounds more than a little unbelievable, after all- that they’re from a different world, a different universe from this one. How could they even explain such a thing to people who don’t understand physics the same way they do?

 

Glorfindel and Gandalf are both present in the library as well, and Elrond doesn’t look threatening, so that’s something, although Tony’s not convinced it’s not an act meant to put them at ease.

 

“Good morning,” the elf lord greets them cordially. He gestures for them to take seats at a long table, and Glorfindel pours them each a goblet of water.

 

Elrond is silent for a moment, standing with his hands folded as he looks out the window over the valley. Glorfindel leans back against the pillar near the door, looking like a cat at rest, and Gandalf sits across from them at the table, puffing away at his pipe again. The roar of the nearest waterfall is a wash of white noise in the background, and Tony abruptly appreciates the acoustical construction of this place. It would be very difficult for anyone to hear the conversation if they weren’t in the room.

 

“You have done a very great thing,” Elrond says finally, turning to face them. He stays standing, hands still folded, and the sunlight glints on the metal of his circlet. “Saving Bilbo Baggins, and accompanying him on the road in the face of such danger. It is not a feat I would have thought possible of two humans- there are few who can stand against one of the Nazgul, much less all of the Nine.”

 

Tony exchanges a glance with Steve, but Elrond isn’t finished yet. “Glorfindel believes that you have proved your worth in protecting Bilbo and the Ring. He left Bilbo in your care on Amon Sul and you proved yourselves worthy of his trust. But you must understand how it appears, that you can appear at exactly the right moment, fight as you did, and then know of such things.”

 

“I can see how that might look a little suspicious,” Tony agrees after a moment. In the corner, Glorfindel lets out a little snort, although when she glances at him, he looks entirely composed. Steve huffs a little breath and rubs his forehead.

 

“Could you not?” he says under his breath. Elrond is looking at them with a furrowed brow. Gandalf just looks thoughtful.

 

“This is not a joking matter-”

 

“I apologize, Lord Elrond,” Steve says firmly, shooting Tony a look that says behave or else. Shaking her head, she sits back in her seat. “We don’t consider it a joke at all. It’s only- hard to explain.”

 

Elrond inclines his head, gesturing for him to go on, but Steve hesitates. “We’re not- from here.”

 

“Yes, I am curious from whence you hail,” Gandalf says, sitting forward in his chair. “I do not believe I’ve yet heard a satisfactory explanation with regards to your origins. From whence have you come?”

 

“From somewhere else entirely,” Tony says, waving off whatever Steve had been about to say. All of the elves’ and wizard’s eyes turn to her. She looks to Gandalf; of the three of them, he’s probably the most likely to understand. “From… some _when_ else, if that makes any sense.”

 

“It doesn’t,” Glorfindel says drily. Gandalf waves him off, curiosity lighting in his eyes.

 

“Explain,” he demands, and Tony bites her lip, considering.

 

“Do you have something I can draw on?” she asks Elrond.

 

Steve drags a hand over his face. She’s pretty sure she hears him muttering a prayer under his breath.

 

About half an hour later, she’s attempted to sketch out a visual as she explains universes, using spheres to indicate both their similarities to one another and their separation from one another. “It’s not a perfect explanation,” she tells Gandalf. “But it’s the best I can do. At first we thought Amora’s spell had put us into a shared dream, that all of this was in our minds, but we decided we had to treat it as real. What else could we do?”

 

“Indeed,” Gandalf says, sitting back in his chair. His pipe is long since discarded, and he’s moved on to drinking heavily from his goblet. Its contents don’t look much like water anymore, but no one says anything about it. “It is fantastical, I must admit.”

 

“And you say that Middle Earth, that all of our affairs are… similar to history, in this place you say you come from?” Elrond says, his forearms resting on the table. “But not exactly.”

 

“Things are definitely different,” Steve says. “All of this happened sixty years in the future, in the story we know. Names are the same, places are the same, but the players are all different.”

 

“So it was not Bilbo Baggins who carried the Ring in the tale that you knew?” Gandalf asks.

 

Tony shakes her head. “His cousin. Bilbo was an old hobbit by then. Too old to travel so far.”

 

“And was the quest successful?” Gandalf asks more quietly. It feels like the room itself holds its breath, and then lets it out along with the rest of them as she nods.

 

“I’m not sure we should tell you much more,” she says slowly. “In all of my… studies, all of the theories about time travel... “ She shakes her head. “We may not come from this world’s future, but what we say could alter what needs to happen.”

 

“If you follow that logic, you’ve already altered it greatly,” Elrond says. “Your presence saved Bilbo Baggins. If he is meant to carry the Ring to Mordor, then you were meant to be there in that moment to protect him.” He pauses, looks deep in thought, and then he nods. “I agree that you should not tell us much more, however. The risk is great that we might change our actions based on what you say. It could destroy everything.”

 

“Or set it on the path to success,” Gandalf counters, but Elrond shakes his head.

 

He looks to Glorfindel, who’s been silent since Tony had started speaking. “What do you think, old friend?”

 

The lighter-haired elf prowls forward, resting his hands on the far end of the table. “I think,” he says slowly, “that I am not the one to ask about paths between worlds, for all that I’ve travelled one once before. This is far beyond my ken.” He looks at Steve, then at Tony. “But you told me that your role, your purpose is to protect those who require it. And Bilbo Baggins needs all the protection he can get.”

 

Tony waits for someone to protest, but no one does, and finally she sits back down, feeling a heavy weight resting on her shoulders. They’d meant to try and help if they could, but now that it’s being offered, the task seems monumental. And they could very easily mess something up, knowing what might be coming.

 

A hand comes down to cover hers, and she looks up to see Steve raising his brows. Swallowing, she nods sharply.

 

“We’re in,” she says aloud, looking at Elrond and Gandalf, and then at Glorfindel.

 

“We’ll be glad to have you,” the elf says, nodding to them, and Tony starts, then shakes her head.

 

“Did I not, in your history?” Glorfindel asks quietly. It’s Steve’s turn to shake his head.

 

“But this is what we were talking about,” he says, looking at Tony’s paper, covered in shapes and arrows and her scribbles. “So much is different. We don’t want to change things for the worse. But we want to be where we’re supposed to be, and if we’re supposed to be here?”

 

“You are where you’re meant to be,” Gandalf says, draining the rest of his goblet. He pushes his chair back and stands, and the smile he sends them both this time is genuine. “I will also be glad to have the two of you with us.” He looks to Elrond. “I will inform Saruman about the change in plans.”

 

Tony’s head whips around, and she stares at Steve, who stands, almost knocking his chair over. “Wait,” he barks.

 

Gandalf stops in his tracks, startled. Steve shakes his head. “You can’t tell Saruman.”

 

Elrond has risen, too, and Tony slowly stands as well as the elf lord says, “Saruman the White is our ally. He is the leader of the wizards, and a great power in this world.”

 

“He’s a traitor,” Tony says flatly. “He’s corrupted and evil. If he knows about the company, his forces will destroy it the second we leave Rivendell.”

 

Elrond sputters, but Gandalf looks as though he’s thinking very hard. Elrond turns and waves a hand at the wizard. “You can hardly lend credence to this! Saruman has been our friend and ally for an Age of this world! For millennia, Gandalf!”

 

“Of course,” Gandalf says slowly. “Yes, of course he has. But all the same, Elrond, why did you not invite him to this meeting? He might have stayed, after the Council concluded, but you bade him go.”

 

“He was at the Council,” Tony groans under her breath. Steve sends her a sharp look that very clearly says _Not now, Tony_.

 

“I- it would have been a great drain upon his power to remain,” Elrond says defensively. “To remain here in spirit, but not in body. I intended to inform him of any relevant information after we concluded our conversation with the Captain and Ms. Stark.”

 

“And now that they have told us this?” Glorfindel asks. Elrond looks between the two of them, and finally he shakes his head.

 

“Not everything is the same as what they know,” he protests, but even then it sounds weak. Glorfindel nods to Gandalf.

 

“It is true that we have no proof of this Saruman’s betrayal,” he says, tapping one finger on the table where he’s stayed still, watching the argument. “But were it true, a great many small things might be explained. We should watch, and wait, and be prepared to move should it be necessary.” He glances at Gandalf. “And perhaps not inform Saruman of any changes to our plans.”

 

Steve nods, and glances down at Tony, who also nods, albeit reluctantly. The room seems to lighten, and Elrond nods to them all. “Then I go to prepare for the company’s departure, once Mr. Baggins is healed.”

 

He leaves, and Glorfindel sends them a weary smile before departing with Gandalf, the two of them speaking quietly.

 

“At least we got two out of three,” she says. Steve drags a hand down over his face again, and she’s struck once more by how strange it is to see him without the beard. She supposes it’ll be back again soon.

 

“He nearly destroyed Rohan,” Steve says quietly. Tony leans sideways and bumps against him.

 

“And we won’t let it happen this time, either,” she says firmly. It gets a smile out of him, albeit a small, tired one, and he wraps an arm around her shoulders again as they go. Stepping out into the fresh air, they’re both surprised to see it’s only midday. It had seemed much darker, the air much closer in the library.

 

 

 

_One Month Later_

 

Tony’s spent most of the past month in Rivendell’s forges, working with Alben. It’s the best way she could think of to keep her mind occupied and not worry about the company’s departure, only a few days away, now. It’s almost Halloween, which isn’t a holiday they celebrate in Middle Earth, although Tony thinks it could probably develop quite the following if introduced to the Shire. They’re set to leave on October the 31st, and things are nearly ready, now.

 

All that remains is testing everything out, and Steve’s giving it the old college try today. He’s down at the practice area, where he’s spent a great deal of the month when he’s not sketching or reading or watching Tony work in the forges. He’s greatly enjoyed sparring and training with the elves, all of whom are faster and much more coordinated than baseline humans. He’s also dragged Tony out almost every day, forcing her to practice with him, too, and they’d taken up their usual sparring with makeshift bo staves.

 

Today, though, he’s sparring with Glorfindel, an event that’s apparently gathering quite the audience. Steve’s already wearing the scale mail Tony had finished for him a week and a half ago, now, its steel light but incredibly strong. When she’d seen the scale worn by the elven guards in full armor, she hadn’t been able to resist appending the design to recreate a version of Captain America’s scale armor from the comics, albeit not in cobalt blue. And she’s just finished one more thing for him to test out, something she has to get to Steve before he and Glorfindel finish up, so she’s hustling down the path towards the guards’ practice area, covered surprise in hand.

 

No one else realizes the significance of her making Steve a shield, of course. Alben had been amenable, although he’d been a bit confused when Tony had described it as Steve’s primary weapon, and then even more puzzled when she’d specified the dimensions and the optimal weight. It’s not made from vibranium, of course, but the alloy Alben had shared with her is one he’d developed himself. Not unlike the first one he’d created, he says, but significantly more stable, and far less inclined towards developing an evil consciousness (although that, he assures her, is due to exposure to a dragon, which was not as reassuring as he probably intended it to be). Glorfindel’s sword is also made from it and has served him well for quite some time now, so this will be a good test of the shield’s strength.

 

She reaches the practice area and slips through the crowd, trying not to hit anyone with the shield. Steve and Glorfindel are pretty evenly matched, it seems; Glorfindel might be slightly faster, but Steve’s far stronger. They’re fighting with live steel, and it’s obvious that Glorfindel has a great deal more experience with a blade, although after a month of training, Tony would put good money on the skills Steve’s developed. Glorfindel’s using a two-handed blade, the steel gleaming with the same matte finish as the shield in Tony’s hands, while Steve has a one-handed sword and a longer, rectangular shield that he’s using to good effect.

 

All of the soon-to-be travelling companions are present, watching the bout, which Tony supposes is reasonable, since Steve and Glorfindel (what a strange combination of names, honestly) will be defending them all. Bilbo in particular seems to be watching closely, although he looks like he wants to step a few feet further back, and considering the speed of the two combatants and the loud clashes whenever one of them makes contact, Tony can’t really blame him. They’re terrifyingly fast and vicious, and if she didn’t trust their skills, she’d be very concerned that they would accidentally kill one another.

 

Thorin’s near Bilbo, standing just far enough away that he’s out of immediate conversational range and watching the fight closely. His nephews are with him, still, despite the shouting match in Khuzdul that had taken place the night after the Council. The dwarf king had insisted on accompanying Bilbo on the journey, and his nephews had followed suit; Bilbo hadn’t necessarily been best pleased by the idea, but he hadn’t outright _refused_ , which is about the best Tony can say for that situation. The idea of a king and both his heirs marching off to certain death seems a bit concerning to her, but Kili had assured her that his mum is ruling perfectly well in Erebor in their stead (“Probably better than Uncle Thorin- oh, but don’t tell him I said that, he’s already been moping for months.”) Tony, who is fairly certain the dwarf king has not spoken a single word to her since the night they met, had just shaken her head and left dwarven business to the dwarves.

 

The son of the Steward of Gondor had left like a stormcloud soon after the Council as well. She hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting him, but Estel had relayed his charming sentiments, which mainly consisted of complaints that two women had been chosen to guard the Ring while he, himself, was sent packing. He seemed to take an intense dislike to Estel for reasons she wouldn’t elaborate upon, but Elrond was the one to make the decision to send him home to Gondor. Anyone so insistent that the Ring be used instead of destroyed would not be a good companion for Bilbo. Tony’s not sure, of course, but she thinks Steve might have nudged that along a bit. Slipped a word to Glorfindel, maybe. She doesn’t want to ask; looking a gift horse in the mouth seems like a poor idea at this point. Of course, sending a powerful ally home in a snit doesn’t bode well for the future, either, but they’ll deal with that problem if it becomes one.

 

Estel had convinced Elrond to allow her to come. The fate of the world of Men rested upon the quest as much as any other race, she’d argued, and he’d agreed, although he hadn’t looked best pleased about it. Much like Kili and Fili’s insistence that they accompany their friend on his journey, Elrond probably recognized that there would be no leaving her behind were she that determined to join the party.

 

Elrond and Gandalf are looking down at the bout from a nearby terrace, and Tony does a quick head count. One hobbit, three dwarves, two humans, one wizard, and an elf. It brings their count up to eight, not nine, but Tony’s less worried about having one less person than she is about bringing Denethor along with the party. And standing here, watching Steve parry a wicked strike and Glorfindel spin around so fast that he’s nearly a blur, she feels pretty confident about their chances.

 

Captain America and Iron Woman, escorting the One Ring to Mordor. When they get back (and they will), no one’s going to believe her, but that’s fine, because this is going to be the greatest adventure of their lives. She catches a hint of an inhuman whisper and turns to glance over at Bilbo, seeing Thorin's eyes on the hobbit as well. The whisper quiets, and she turns her attention back to the bout.

 

The combatants slow down a moment later, disengaging to take a breather, and Tony steps forward. “Hey, Rogers!” she calls. Steve looks over at the sound of her voice, and she watches his eyes drop down to what she’s holding. She tugs the cloth cover off, and his they widen in surprise. She thought he might have guessed what she was making, but clearly he didn’t, and she grins.

 

It’s the best she can do under the circumstances, and the weight won’t be exactly the same, nor will it absorb blows like vibranium would. But the shield is identical to his in every other respect, from its dimensions to the rings on its smooth surface to the sturdy leather straps Steve hooks around his forearm.

 

Stepping forward so she doesn’t thwack anyone, she hefts it, draws back, and lets it fly with a grunt of effort. It sails over to Steve just like a giant metal frisbee is supposed to do, and he tosses the rectangular shield aside, reaching up and plucking the new one out of the air. She watches him turn it in his hands, testing the weight, and then he slides it onto his forearm, settling it into place. Her pulse thunders in her ears as that feeling of having made something that works, something that’s exactly what was needed, that solved a problem, washes over her.

 

Steve looks up at her. Their eyes lock, and she doesn’t quite have words to describe his expression when he looks at her. Thanks. Understanding. A lot more than that. She nods, one side of her mouth lifting upward.

 

Then she lifts her chin in Glorfindel’s direction.

 

He looks away, back at the elf, who’s watching all of this with faint amusement. He’s actually out of breath, and looks pleased as punch. He lifts his sword questioningly. “Shall we, my friend?”

 

Tony’s some distance away, but she recognizes the expression on Steve’s face as he nods. Almost a smile, but not quite. It’s the expression he gets when he’s stepped into a good, challenging fight, when he’s met someone that can match him blow for blow.

 

She’s only seen it once or twice, but it’s hard to forget as he settles back down into his stance and lifts the shield. As Glorfindel moves in, Steve grins.

 

Steel meets steel with a crash.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was so pleased by this chapter title. Agar was less than pleased, but I am greatly amused by puns. Heh. 
> 
> And thus concludes my first big bang and the longest fic I've ever written solo. For anyone interested, I have part two (ie, approximately the rest of Fellowship) plotted out, and I intend to continue on with it, although it'll probably be up chapter by chapter, and will also likely expand to include other narrators in addition to Tony. 
> 
> I hope you've enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it! It was a one-shot that took on a life of its own, and there's a lot more story to tell. And then Fynndin just went and brought what I wrote to life with their art, and I am just over the moon. *flails*
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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